Radiators and Cooling In Old Kenworths

I had a few cab overs. The last one I drove from ‘93 to ‘99. I only had one that had temp control issues. The first 3408 I had was in a Powerliner, no issues even after it was fuelled up beyond anything reasonable. The last one was in an ‘85, last year for the V8 and there was no Powerliner. It had an American cab with the small grille opening and i had problems. First casualty was the a/c, condenser was overheating the thing with 2 turns on the screw and I didn’t want to drill holes in my cab to go roof mount. Took a big tube Mesabi rad and an aftermarket high capacity fan to cure it. I should have been able to kick it out of gear and run on the propeller. Idled up in a lot that thing would move trash on the ground 15’ from the truck when the fan tripped. Big difference between those 2 just over a grille opening.

 

I have been forced to take off the front grill and lay it on the floor of my flat bed trailer to let more air get thru the Rad. and it worked to lower the temperature 20 degrees in the desert when temp. was way over 115 outside and I had as close to 25 tons as I could get on, but the crooks were very smart pulling up next to trucks and cutting the straps on copper loads and tossing the flat plates in a p/u truck before the driver can get out of the bunk and do anything to stop them from running off with 10 thousand of dollars of their loads, i put 2 snap binder with locks on each stack and they would go to a different truck that had straps on copper loads and l was leaving my headache rack light on when I parked??