Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

I'm going to recore the radiator in my 56 Clipper and would like to know if anyone knows how the cores differ between the three listed part numbers. There are radiators listed for junior, senior, and air conditioned cars. With only one water pump option, the flow would have to be controlled by the limitation of the radiator. I plan to add air conditioning and would like to have the capacity in the radiator. Thanks.

The physical mounting is the same but maybe someone else knows for sure how the smallest or junior radiator differs. Maybe it is fin density since the engines and cars are a bit smaller. I think the thickness is about the same as senior cars. I believe the standard radiator for larger engined and heavier senior cars without AC had 3 rows of cores and the AC radiator is thicker with 4 rows. The AC cars also had a 6 blade fan.

Definitely do not skimp on the core thickness. A fellow from Chicago who used to post regularly went thru all kinds of grief with overheating a few years ago after adding AC to his 56 Patrician. Tried the usual fixes with fans, thermostats, timing etc to make it run cool with all efforts having no or minimal change. What the problem finally ended up being was a previous owner had installed a new radiator just prior to selling the car. The fellow thought with the radiator being new and OK it was not worth considering. It might have been OK for the small engine without AC. For the 374 and AC it turned out the radiator was inadequate and had way too small a core. A new larger radiator solved his problem.

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Remember if you are adding A/C... factory A/C had a different fan. So just beefing up the radiator core won't do the whole job if you don't have a fan capable of pulling a lot of air through that beefy core. It's not so much the water pump that matters... it's the fan.

The cores I used to install in Packards that were similar or on par with factory A/C were known as "desert-cooler" cores that were at least 4-row.

And even if you are adding a modern foreign compressor, today's A/C systems operating on R-134 really have to work a lot harder than they did with freon-especially when idling or in traffic on a hot day or at low speeds. And the little compressors designed to work on imports with a small interior and small evaporator really have to push to get the interior of a big 1950s American car cooled down. So they need all the help they can get.