Back in 2007 I bought a 57000 radiator/fan/vsc setup from flex-a-lite. I got my truck running in 2011 and have had issues ever since.
Boy, if I knew what I'd be into on that decision.
The short of it is, flex-a-lite engineering and quality is junk, period.
The long of it is:
Radiators: all leaked at the same exact spot. the 4 corners. It's the classic sign of design or possibly manufacturing defect. I had them leak tested. Now flex-a-lite is happy to send along a new one I will say that about them, their customer service, is good, but what's disturbing is they don't want the old one back. The first one, I thought it was my mounting.. The flex-a-lite radiators have side tanks with heavy thick rails, which is part of the reason I choose them. You can mount things to them and use them to mount the radiator. I had mounted it front face to the rad support at 4 points. I thought mabey it was twisting up on trails and that was causing the leak points. Next one I mounted only two top bolts, basicly hanging. after a few weeks, leaked, same exact spots. where tubes go into side tanks near the 4 corners of the core. The third one I floated with a side mount one bolt and face mount one bolt, both near the center up and down. Leaks, same spot, AND,I didn't even drive it, I started the engine and basically just let it warm up, did that 3 or 4 times. Just heat cycling it, breaks it. Now the leaks were never bad, it wasn't a giant blow hole. And it would only leak after you shut the truck off. It seemed to leak worse in winter than in summer. I was never worried about the radiator coming apart or worried about it driving it long distances on a hot summer day, but it is certainly annoying to have a small puddle of coolant every time you shut the truck off.
Click here to watch the video of one of them being leak tested.
(it's 121mb HD vid, might want to download first, then play)
VSC controller: this has to be one of the worst possible electrical devices I've ever seen. It certainly does not belong on a vehicle or in any environment that is hot, cold, wet, or vibrates somewhat. 4 controllers. All go bad in various forms. Again, flex-a-lite was happy to send another controller, even if well beyond the 1 year warranty they offer, which is good. But the controller design, is just bad. Two of them simply didn't function if it was above 75degrees out until I mounted a giant heat sink to the back of it but that only increased it's threshold point, it would still cut out if too hot. It's basically a run of the mill board design encapsulated in rubber. Since the rubber doesn't really stick, moisture can sitll get in, and the board itself, is not ruggedized for under hood duty. They tell you you cannot modify the temp probe leads (super thin wire to the probe, they're measuring resistance of), and they're not that long, which forces you to mount the thing under the hood, where this device cannot hack it. I un-encapsulated one, the back had burnt traces and three of the spade terminal for control leads were busted at the solder joints on the back of the board. The turn on and off points seem to vary, not consistent at all. The good, it was variable speed which was nice the fans didn't instantly come on full blast, and it ran the fans for 10s or so after key off which really goes a long way to minimize the radiator heat soak immediately after engine off. But, the unreliability of this board is ... I can't believe it functions anywhere, people who have it must drive their car one day a year or something. I'm extremely anal about my wiring (see this post for a sample on how I do things), everything was properly gauged SXL wire, metri-pak weather connectors where I could use like the high power 10ga wires that lead to the fans, and all wiring in high-temp loom and secured especially near the controller so there was no strain or vibes on the wires entering the controller. Oh, and the override options for full on or full off (never know when you might was to do some fording hehehe) never worked reliably even when new and on the truck just testing out the circuits. Basically the overrides work by grounding a pin on the controller, run that through a switch (or two switches if you want both the full on and full off, or in my case, a three position DPDT switch) and you should be able to throw a switch and ground that pin operating the fans for off or on. The problem was, their logic in that controller fails if it finds any residual voltage on the ground wire your feeding the their controller. since my switch ground lead also served as ground for the illuminated LED within the switch itself, there was like 0.02v or something on that wire and the flex-a-lite controller would sometimes work and sometimes not. I could always get the controller to override by running direct a ground from battery to the pin on the controller. Using that ground wire for anything else that may produce some residual voltage, was problematic for the controller. Working for OEM's and knowing several EE's, when I asked them about this condition, they said, yeah, that controller must be junk. When we design something it has to be able to take some residual voltage in those conditions, up to 3v was a design spec on ground leads into electronic devices. So, I guess, Not their fault explicitly, but it gives you insight into the level of design and testing on the board.
Fans: The one good component of the package. Havn't had any issues with the fans themselves. They pull alot of air. They are 14.5" diam dual fans. They are unimotors, which is a four seasons brand and the same motors you'll find on many production Ford vehicles. My only complaint is they used crappy paint on the mounting bracket, I had to take it apart, sandblast that bracket and re-paint it as it was showing rust after a few rain drives. And they're not 40amps as flex-a-lite advertises. 40amp fuse is mabey a good idea, but when I pulled the spec from uni-motor, those motors are 13.9amps max draw. Meaning 28amps for the pair.
Soutions:
Radiator: Since they are alum. tubes going into an alum side tank, I am going to try to braze them. I did ask several shops around here, none of them said you can repair an alum. rad. I found some shops online that advertise they do, but nothing near me, I'd have to ship the rad out. Hell, I have three radiators, why not try it myself. I found some youtube videos on how to do it. Put the radiator up on end, wire brush all the tube to tank joints, get some low temp (730degrees) melting alum. brazing rod (Home depot carries, not sure why seems like an odd item, I didn't even know it existed) and use a hand held propane torch and the alum rod will get sucked into all the joints just like solder to copper. I figure, it's worth a shot.
To replace the VSC, I decided to mess around with my RamJet engine computer. I had already unlocked it and had the tuner software for it. I knew it already has coolant readings and it was capable of doing it, just needed to find the right options in the software to do it. I found if I used the "overheat" flag and check gauges light control pin, it could be done. Overheat condition had a high and low temp set point, and when it reached the high, it grounds the j1-9 "check gauges" pin on the controller, which was unused in the as delivered RamJet setup, and when it reached the low setup, it would unground the j1-9 pin. So, I found the micro-pak 100 terminal GM part number and order a bag of 10 of those, and I setup my fans thorough a relay to ground through that. THe best part is, with the addition of a 2nd relay, I could finally use my full on and full off switch already wired in the dash! The only thing was, I had to uncheck the "reduced RPM mode when engine overheat detected" flag in the software after lowing the overheat threshold considerably. I wired in the two new relays and the new pin out from the engine controller, and works super reliably! I won't have to worry about the GM engine computer overheating or getting cold, or vibrating and breaking solder joints. That's a time tested super rugged board in a super sealed case, a production quality component.
It took a somewhat complicated circuit to do it, but once wired into nice sealed metri-pak 400 relay bases (I used new terminals in the base, no splicing for me). I pillaged this maxi-fuse/relay center from a late 90's Bonneville. It works really well for my needs. New relays are far right and the one on top. The other relays control fuel pump, Ramjet control (came on the harness with the computer), headlights, off-road lights, horn and something else.... grrr....I really need to label these!
Boy, if I knew what I'd be into on that decision.
The short of it is, flex-a-lite engineering and quality is junk, period.
The long of it is:
Radiators: all leaked at the same exact spot. the 4 corners. It's the classic sign of design or possibly manufacturing defect. I had them leak tested. Now flex-a-lite is happy to send along a new one I will say that about them, their customer service, is good, but what's disturbing is they don't want the old one back. The first one, I thought it was my mounting.. The flex-a-lite radiators have side tanks with heavy thick rails, which is part of the reason I choose them. You can mount things to them and use them to mount the radiator. I had mounted it front face to the rad support at 4 points. I thought mabey it was twisting up on trails and that was causing the leak points. Next one I mounted only two top bolts, basicly hanging. after a few weeks, leaked, same exact spots. where tubes go into side tanks near the 4 corners of the core. The third one I floated with a side mount one bolt and face mount one bolt, both near the center up and down. Leaks, same spot, AND,I didn't even drive it, I started the engine and basically just let it warm up, did that 3 or 4 times. Just heat cycling it, breaks it. Now the leaks were never bad, it wasn't a giant blow hole. And it would only leak after you shut the truck off. It seemed to leak worse in winter than in summer. I was never worried about the radiator coming apart or worried about it driving it long distances on a hot summer day, but it is certainly annoying to have a small puddle of coolant every time you shut the truck off.
Click here to watch the video of one of them being leak tested.
(it's 121mb HD vid, might want to download first, then play)
VSC controller: this has to be one of the worst possible electrical devices I've ever seen. It certainly does not belong on a vehicle or in any environment that is hot, cold, wet, or vibrates somewhat. 4 controllers. All go bad in various forms. Again, flex-a-lite was happy to send another controller, even if well beyond the 1 year warranty they offer, which is good. But the controller design, is just bad. Two of them simply didn't function if it was above 75degrees out until I mounted a giant heat sink to the back of it but that only increased it's threshold point, it would still cut out if too hot. It's basically a run of the mill board design encapsulated in rubber. Since the rubber doesn't really stick, moisture can sitll get in, and the board itself, is not ruggedized for under hood duty. They tell you you cannot modify the temp probe leads (super thin wire to the probe, they're measuring resistance of), and they're not that long, which forces you to mount the thing under the hood, where this device cannot hack it. I un-encapsulated one, the back had burnt traces and three of the spade terminal for control leads were busted at the solder joints on the back of the board. The turn on and off points seem to vary, not consistent at all. The good, it was variable speed which was nice the fans didn't instantly come on full blast, and it ran the fans for 10s or so after key off which really goes a long way to minimize the radiator heat soak immediately after engine off. But, the unreliability of this board is ... I can't believe it functions anywhere, people who have it must drive their car one day a year or something. I'm extremely anal about my wiring (see this post for a sample on how I do things), everything was properly gauged SXL wire, metri-pak weather connectors where I could use like the high power 10ga wires that lead to the fans, and all wiring in high-temp loom and secured especially near the controller so there was no strain or vibes on the wires entering the controller. Oh, and the override options for full on or full off (never know when you might was to do some fording hehehe) never worked reliably even when new and on the truck just testing out the circuits. Basically the overrides work by grounding a pin on the controller, run that through a switch (or two switches if you want both the full on and full off, or in my case, a three position DPDT switch) and you should be able to throw a switch and ground that pin operating the fans for off or on. The problem was, their logic in that controller fails if it finds any residual voltage on the ground wire your feeding the their controller. since my switch ground lead also served as ground for the illuminated LED within the switch itself, there was like 0.02v or something on that wire and the flex-a-lite controller would sometimes work and sometimes not. I could always get the controller to override by running direct a ground from battery to the pin on the controller. Using that ground wire for anything else that may produce some residual voltage, was problematic for the controller. Working for OEM's and knowing several EE's, when I asked them about this condition, they said, yeah, that controller must be junk. When we design something it has to be able to take some residual voltage in those conditions, up to 3v was a design spec on ground leads into electronic devices. So, I guess, Not their fault explicitly, but it gives you insight into the level of design and testing on the board.
Fans: The one good component of the package. Havn't had any issues with the fans themselves. They pull alot of air. They are 14.5" diam dual fans. They are unimotors, which is a four seasons brand and the same motors you'll find on many production Ford vehicles. My only complaint is they used crappy paint on the mounting bracket, I had to take it apart, sandblast that bracket and re-paint it as it was showing rust after a few rain drives. And they're not 40amps as flex-a-lite advertises. 40amp fuse is mabey a good idea, but when I pulled the spec from uni-motor, those motors are 13.9amps max draw. Meaning 28amps for the pair.
Soutions:
Radiator: Since they are alum. tubes going into an alum side tank, I am going to try to braze them. I did ask several shops around here, none of them said you can repair an alum. rad. I found some shops online that advertise they do, but nothing near me, I'd have to ship the rad out. Hell, I have three radiators, why not try it myself. I found some youtube videos on how to do it. Put the radiator up on end, wire brush all the tube to tank joints, get some low temp (730degrees) melting alum. brazing rod (Home depot carries, not sure why seems like an odd item, I didn't even know it existed) and use a hand held propane torch and the alum rod will get sucked into all the joints just like solder to copper. I figure, it's worth a shot.
To replace the VSC, I decided to mess around with my RamJet engine computer. I had already unlocked it and had the tuner software for it. I knew it already has coolant readings and it was capable of doing it, just needed to find the right options in the software to do it. I found if I used the "overheat" flag and check gauges light control pin, it could be done. Overheat condition had a high and low temp set point, and when it reached the high, it grounds the j1-9 "check gauges" pin on the controller, which was unused in the as delivered RamJet setup, and when it reached the low setup, it would unground the j1-9 pin. So, I found the micro-pak 100 terminal GM part number and order a bag of 10 of those, and I setup my fans thorough a relay to ground through that. THe best part is, with the addition of a 2nd relay, I could finally use my full on and full off switch already wired in the dash! The only thing was, I had to uncheck the "reduced RPM mode when engine overheat detected" flag in the software after lowing the overheat threshold considerably. I wired in the two new relays and the new pin out from the engine controller, and works super reliably! I won't have to worry about the GM engine computer overheating or getting cold, or vibrating and breaking solder joints. That's a time tested super rugged board in a super sealed case, a production quality component.
It took a somewhat complicated circuit to do it, but once wired into nice sealed metri-pak 400 relay bases (I used new terminals in the base, no splicing for me). I pillaged this maxi-fuse/relay center from a late 90's Bonneville. It works really well for my needs. New relays are far right and the one on top. The other relays control fuel pump, Ramjet control (came on the harness with the computer), headlights, off-road lights, horn and something else.... grrr....I really need to label these!
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I have little faith in my al/plastic auto parts store piece, since the first one failed on install.
