Looked up to get a New one for my 89 3.0 but they show a single row for 3.0 but a Double row for a 4.0
I know the one on my 89 was a Factory one that was 2 row.
The question is... Is the Radiators the same on the 3.0s & the 4.0s?

Thanks.

 

Hi Everyone, long time lurker, first post!

So what did you find out about this radiator question? I have a 1993 Aerostar that needs a radiator/water pump and would like to use the 4 core instead of the 2 core. Has anyone done this? It would appear from photos that they are the same, except the thickness of course, wondering if it will change the position of my a/c or other coolers. I will post what I find, but would be nice to hear some insight.

Jeff.

 

the top hose fitting on the 4.0 radiator points downward compared to the 3.0 straight out fitting.the fitting points toward the alternater.it might work combining two molded hoses.

 

So! I installed the 4 core radiator with little trouble! The only difference I could see was as Zenish said, upper radiator hose was at a slight angle, requiring a bit of a hose trim and carefull orientation of the upper hose, as to not contact the alternator pulley. I also had to slightly trim the original fan shroud to clear the a/c pump. I deleted my mechanical fan and replaced it with a volvo 2 speed electric, adapting it to my original shroud. Thanks Zenish for helping out, i just wanted to respond with my experience as to help others.

 

Id also like to add that as Mark Kovalsky had pointed out in a different thread on deleting the mechanical fan and installing my Volvo electric fan that I would be reducing the air movement through the cooler for the transmission as well. I have since rectified this with installing a larger transmission cooler in series with the original, in front of the radiator. Seems to be doing the trick, but I will chime in again if I still see the problems I made for myself with the trans puking its guts out on long drives where the trans got hotter than it would like.

Thanks for the insight Mark!

 

I wish I had seen this sooner. I had tried to put a 4.0 radiator in my 3.0 and ran into the problem with the hose/alternator pulley clearance when using the 3.0 upper radiator hose from my '97. I didn't have time to leave my Aerostar apart so I put it back together with the 3.0 radiator. My 4.0 radiator was going to be removed from my totaled '95 Aerostar. Anyway, with the schedule pressure on, I had to get rid of the '95 and put the '97 back on the road. However, over the years, when visiting the junkyards, I noticed that there was another upper radiator hose configuration that might have worked better than on my '97 with the 4.0 radiator. I can't remember the year (it was earlier than '97), but the hose ran almost straight forward from the thermostat housing, then bent ~90 degrees to run outboard towards the upper radiator inlet before it made another ~90 degree bend to mate up with the inlet. I never had a chance to try this as my poor '97 also met its untimely demise due to an accident.

As for your tranny cooler, you can find some that have an electric fan mounted on them. You might consider that if you're up for more tinkering. Although I had no idea how hot my transmission was getting, I've never had it puke fluid and the engine temp gauge got really high in the "normal" part of the range. The radiator on my 3.0 was probably 60% plugged by stop leak that the previous owner put in. That stuff is evil. I never had temperature issues with the single row 3.0 radiator when I put a new one in.