So I just now learned that the Engineered Cooling Products is again carrying the radiator for our 2nd gen Blazers and S-10 trucks. I had thought they had been discontinued but now they have them.
This was the only all aluminum radiator that I was able to find that appeared to be made domestically (in the US). I'm wondering why they suddenly have them again. I hope they are not pulling a fast one and these are more Chinese imports. Perhaps my inquiries and encouragement to make them again actually worked.
I find this all interesting but never really gave much thought to heavy cooling when pulling my boat. I think in part because I live in flatland country and the only real hill is a overpass. Also odd because I note the dash has an indicator for tow haul mode but there is no selector on dash or shift lever to engage one if it did. Years back I recall a Suburban that had dealer added flip switch for vacuum to trans for towing, basically a torque converter switch. Do you note truck running that hot when hauling a trailer? Have not had a chance to pull mine but once here since getting this Blazer.
I find this all interesting but never really gave much thought to heavy cooling when pulling my boat. I think in part because I live in flatland country and the only real hill is a overpass. Also odd because I note the dash has an indicator for tow haul mode but there is no selector on dash or shift lever to engage one if it did. Years back I recall a Suburban that had dealer added flip switch for vacuum to trans for towing, basically a torque converter switch. Do you note truck running that hot when hauling a trailer? Have not had a chance to pull mine but once here since getting this Blazer.
So one of the places to which I tow my sailboat (2,200 lbs of boat and trailer) locally involves a 1,700 ft grade over 6 miles. Other places to which I tow it require navigating several hills several hundred feet high in only a couple miles. About once a year during the summer I'll drive from North Idaho to Puget Sound (Seattle) along I-90 which takes me over one large mountain pass (Snoqualmie Pass) at about 3,000' and up a another steep grade near Vantage WA that goes up 1,900' over 13 miles. Much of the drive in eastern WA is very hot, especially at the Vantage grade.
To answer your question, I have had my truck start to overheat on occasion. I do my best to monitor the temperature and drive accordingly to prevent needing to pull over although I have a couple times pulled over and stopped to let things cool down.
I've seen Blazers with a tow-mode button mounted in the front of the center console. I think it modifies the shift points of the transmission. I've also learned (the hard way) that you should never tow any sort of load with our Blazers while in Overdrive.
To help with preventing overheating, I installed an Ultraguage OBDII reader that can give me real-time reports of the transmission temperature in addition to the water temperature. Our 4L60E transmissions have a temperature sensor but it is not wired to anything. This reader allows that.
Pointing out the obvious: the owner's manual says to just put automatics in 3rd when towing a trailer, which accomplishes about the same thing.
The same manual also mentions the Tow/Haul mode, but I don't think I've ever seen a Blazer equipped with it. It's quite possible that it's just an artifact of sharing the same cluster across lots of similar truck/SUV models for lots of years.
I've never had cooling issues either even towing in the summer unless there was a problem, it's mostly just kind of a fun idea. And if you need to replace the radiator anyway extra cooling capacity really isn't going to hurt anything. The plastic end tanks are where my original radiator finally split, so an all-aluminum design might eliminate a potential point of failure there too.
I drove semi across country for over 23 years, I know the hills your talking about just did not think these trucks could run that hot but it does make sense if the base cooling is not enough especially when pulling a load. My go to backup plan was flip the hvac to hot, roll down the windows and let that extra heat exchanger help out for the pull. Recall my dad doing that back in the 70’s with a Pontiac Station wagon, got pretty warm inside but did not overheat. The durability gain appears to be worth the cost, will keep this in mind when I replace mine. Thanks for the info on them!
Rockauto has all aluminum Rads for our truck they run out every now and then but always get them back
Thanks for the update. I took another look and realized that the one RA by Liland has is one I decided I did not want because it did not seem to have any extra cooling capacity over the OEM style ones because its core thickness was about the same as the OEM ones.
03-07-2019, 11:43 AM
