CSF VAG MQB All-Aluminium Triple Pass Water Radiator – SEAT LEON CUPRA
With the MQB platform able to generate huge amounts of power, with an output increase of almost 30% achievable with intakes, exhausts, intercooler and software an often overlooked area for improvement is the factory engine water cooling system.
With such a substantial increase in output easily achievable it’s easy to understand why the factory water radiator can struggle to exchange the heat from the engine and now exhaust gas heat from the integrated engine head exhaust manifold. It’s not uncommon for these engines, whilst showing 90c on the coolant dial to actually be running in excess of 110c up to 130c during track driving when properly logged.
Whatsmore is that during spirited driving, whilst the engine water coolant temp becomes high so does the engine oil. It’s not uncommon for engine oil temperatures to spike to over 130c-145c during spirited driving and struggles to reduce without substantial time spent cooling the car down. This is due to there being no factory engine oil cooler, so the factory water radiator has a lot of work to do.
Let’s take a look at the stock cooler…
The Stock Cooler:
- 1-row 26mm core
- single-pass
- 7mm fin height
The stock cooler uses a single row, 26 mm core and is of a single pass design. This is a very thin core for this that does not make use of the available space efficiently which contributes to the cooling issues. After months of development, we have developed a solution which maximises the efficiency and of the space available whilst maintaining all of the factory mounting locations, hose locations etc for a direct replacement part, our specification is below…
- 2-row 42mm B-tube core
- Triple-pass design
- 6.5mm fin height
The CSF All-Aluminum Triple Pass Water Radiator utilises a 2-row 42mm core. Utilising all of the space between the condenser and radiator the core depth has been maximised and compatibility confirmed with large aftermarket intercoolers such as IE. The B-tube design maximises the tube efficiency in all areas, this tube design is stronger than 0-tubes less material can be used for a lighter more efficient heat transfer whilst surface area inside the tube is increased by 15% over 0-tubes.
