Your Holden's cooling system plays a crucial role in ensuring your vehicle's parts are operating at an optimal temperature. Generally, most parts, including your engine, generate a lot of heat when they're working, which is why you need to make sure they maintain a safe temperature in order to prolong their lifespan and ensure optimum performance. Your Holden radiator is the part which helps maintain the temperature of the engine, and if yours is faulty or completely broken, you need to replace it as soon as possible to avoid serious engine damage.
The Holden radiator is located in the front of the engine bay, and it's held in place using brackets and rubber bushings at the top and the bottom. In case you aren't familiar with how radiators work, here are the basics:
Coolant goes down to your engine to bring down its temperature by flowing through the engine cylinders and carrying the heat away. The hot coolant then goes through a radiator hose and right into the radiator. The radiator is comprised of a series of tubes, and the coolant flows through them. As the cooling fan adds air into the radiator, its fins absorb the heat from the tubes and release it into the air. The coolant then goes back to the water pump through another radiator hose and the entire cycle is repeated.
Older radiators were generally made of brass and copper, whereas newer radiators are made of plastic or aluminium. Compared to old radiators, newer models weigh less. At the outlet and inlet of the radiators, you'll find attached tanks which collect the coolant, and there's a transmission cooler mounted on the inside of the tank which helps take away the heat from the coolant. Oftentimes, turbulators are included inside the tubes to induce a turbulence effect which results in better cooling of the coolant.
The two types of radiators you'll come across are crossflow and downflow. Crossflow models feature tanks on the sides of the radiator tubes, whereas in downflow radiators these tanks are located at the top and bottom of the tubes. Crossflow radiators are the more popular option nowadays, simply because they have a more sleek design, whereas downflow radiators are longer and take up a lot of space. When replacing a radiator, it's best to go for the same kind of radiator in order to avoid the hassle of doing additional adjustments during installation.
