| Davis Cores are of proprietary design and build (we can’t show more details that this). They are Nocolok furnace brazed and while some companies offer one fin count, Davis sizes the fin count and thickness to the application. Welders then assemble the radiator. |
adiators and cooling systems are things most racers tend to pay little heed to. After all, how much of a cooling system does a car need to cruise to the staging lanes, do a burnout, make a lap, and then more or less idle back down the return road? Maybe it doesn’t need much more than an old VW Scirrocco radiator, but remember; the dog days of August are right on the horizon. And with those sultry days comes the need for cooling system attention. This is a particularly important consideration when the time between rounds shrinks rapidly and you’re forced to hot lap the car. Pretty soon, any hope of running that dial on your window is at best, out the window. I suspect that right about this time, most of the racers who procrastinated on their racecar cooling system wish they hadn’t.
Horsepower = Heat…
So far so good. It’s no big secret that high horsepower numbers equate to increased heat -- and a bunch of it. Most drag race engines, while big power makers, aren’t really all that efficient (and neither are most internal combustion power plants, but that’s another story). According to people-in-the-know, roughly one-half of the total heat energy produced by the engine is transferred back to the cooling system. In a conventional liquid cooled engine combination (your typical bracket car), the heat energy is pumped into the radiator and is then "radiated" back into the atmosphere. Taking this one step further, a liquid cooling system operates very simply. As the coolant (to keep things simple, let's consider the use of plain water at sea level) temperature approaches 212 degrees F, air pressure begins to build. Since the radiator is closed (with a cap), pressure is allowed to build from within without any opportunity to "escape". This air pressure actually expands, which in turn allows the water to reach a temperature higher than 212 degrees F before boiling. As the air pressure increases, so does the boiling point of the water. Basically, this is an efficient system that works well in passenger car applications, but if the water temperature continues to increase (without leveling off), then the internal pressure will be too great for the radiator cap to handle. The result? Your bracket car boils over and makes a mess. The worse case scenario is if it makes that mess while on a lap. If water gets under the slicks, then things get ugly. Quickly. You know what happens next.