Starting to heat up a little around here , and running 70 in a 3sp auto keeps the revs up. In summer heat I usually see the water temp around the 2nd line ,with no load. Is the radiator on the intercooled models any bigger? I read something similiar not too long ago in a magazine. Found one for 92 on ebay and got curious. We replaced the water pump and had the radiator flushed and rotted only to find a small drop in temperature. I thought about electric fans, but there is no lack of air flow-fan works fine, and temps are kinda high whether running 55 or 80.

 

Our radiators are lame The newer ones are cross flow, VS our top-to-bottom units and they're much larger. You need a different water neck and different hoses...and a shroud. I don't tow much, so it hasn't been worth the expense just yet.

 

Theres no advantage to a cross flow over a down flow rad. If they have the same surface area, they cool the same. However thats not the problem with the non ic trucks. Our trucks have the inlet and outlet on the passenger side, water will take the easy way, so it has no reason to flow to the drivers side, so in reallity your not using the ability of the entire rad. Its easy to test, use infrared therm and check both sides of rad, on mine theres on average a 30 degree diff between the pass and drivers side.
You would get a cooling advantage by going with intercooled rad simply by the fact the water has to flow across from inlet to outlet.
You would need a rad, fan shroud, water neck, rad hose and the core support, im sure theres something im missing but others will chime in.
As far as electric fans, they work but you'll need a heck of a fan, something moving up around 4500 or more cfm, and if it fails your stuck.

 

Thanks for clearing that up, Loch

 

Thanks. My current fan flows fine so thats no biggie. I may consider the swap before long. hopefully later this year or early next, I will be switching to a HTT stage IV and an intercooler, which would be a good time to swap radiators too.