Verus Engineering High Performance Radiator - Gauging Interest
 

We are looking to gauge interest in producing a unit like this for the market. We produced this piece for our own shop car because we’re cooling snobs and we wanted the best possible cooling solution. Nothing currently on the market fit our needs, thus we set out and designed/built our own.

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CAD design
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Rear shot

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Front radiator shot

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Comparison with OEM

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Installed shots

Who will this radiator be for?
-People that want the best radiator for the money.
-People that want a radiator that is designed, built, and 100% manufactured in the U.S.A.
-People that want the same technology that goes into the highest level of motorsports in their own car.
-This is for the hardcore track day enthusiast.

What will come with the radiator?
-Radiator
-(2) High Perf SPAL Fans and mounting hardware
-(2) relays and OEM connector plug for a plug and play install without cutting the OEM loom harness.

What does this radiator do?
-Improve heat rejection over the OEM unit at high rates of speed
-Increase longevity due to an all-aluminum construction
-Reduce overall package thickness significantly (approximately 2”)
-Increase overall airflow through the cooling stack at speed due to the thin design (IE: Racing conditions)

How does the radiator do this?
-The core technology.
-This core was designed by Denso specifically for motorsport use and continues to be used in various racing series including NASCAR, Tudor World Series, and Trophy Trucks to name a few. The company that builds these, is the only company that carries this core.
-Tight tube center to tube center, increases heat rejection and durability while allowing thin packaging.
-Motorsport fin design (louver height, angle, and density were optimized on a calorimeter at Denso's R&D center in Michigan)
-The core is extremely efficient, and thus it can be quite thin while rejecting a lot of heat. By being thin, this allows more airflow through the radiator, which actually increases cooling for all the components in the cooling stack, including the radiator itself.

What’s with the fans?
-The fans are installed directly onto the radiator surface itself. This serves various functions.
-Reduces overall install thickness
-Increases cooling at speeds. A fan shroud, while great at improving flow through the radiator at speeds under ~20-30MPH, actually hinders flow at higher speeds. This actually causes both an increase in vehicle drag, as well as reduced performance from blocking flow. This is even more prevalent with thin shrouds that are box style, OEM fan shroud is quite nice.
-These fans are NOT low profile units. They are high-performance SPAL units which are able to pull significant CFM through dense cooling stacks, something low profile fans struggle with.
-These fans can also be removed for reducing weight on the spot. Two nuts and the whole fan assembly can be pulled off. The fans are two individual assemblies and can be removed without removing the hood latch support.

What can you expect as far as performance?
-Coolant temperatures that are kept in check
-It has been tested in one of the hottest climates in the U.S., Phoenix Arizona. With 122 degree ambient temps, coolant peaked at 92 C (198 F) during cruising speeds (75MPH) and at idle, 95-96 C (205 F) while sitting in traffic with the A/C on full. It spiked once to 100 C (212 F) when idling for a full 45 minutes in I10 traffic and I believe a fan cut off from the heat from the manifold. So even running on just one fan, it maintained a safe temp.
-We’ll be testing it on track in the next few months when the car is fully dialed in on the Full-Race turbo kit.

Why don't you have validation data other than that above?
-The only proper way to test a radiator would be a controlled test like a calorimeter. This is very expensive, somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 grand.
-This started as a project just for ourselves and we've been asked by a few people to bring it to market, we have no desire to spend that kind of money on R&D.

What doesn’t this radiator do?
-It doesn’t compete with anything else in the market. If people would like something like this, great! If not, no harm in asking and potentially offering it, we wanted it for ourselves so that’s why we built it initially.

What will it cost roughly?
Somewhere between $1,200-$1,400

Currently available on a built to order basis here: https://www.verus-engineering.com/pr...mance-radiator . Hoping we can do a production run/group buy with enough interest to reduce the pricing further.

At the very least, I'd like to help educate you guys with common cooling system questions as it was my life for the better part of a decade out of college. I worked at the leading motorsport cooling system provider for NASCAR, F1, IndyCar, Tudor, Trophy Truck, etc. I can't give away all our tips and tricks but I certainly will answer some questions you guys may have. Please keep other manufacturers of radiators out of the questions, we will not respond to those.

Thank you for your time,
Eric

Awesome as always Eric. If you wouldn't mind, I have two questions I'd like to ask.

1) What, if anything, has been done to increase airflow out of the engine bay on this car. And, how effective is that on it's own.

2) Why not include a liquid to liquid oil cooler? One less heat exchanger in the stack, and less points of failure, seems like the way to go to me, but I'm not the engineer.

I like it and look forward to following the development process.

Will there be a version with an integrated oil cooler?

Solid work, will there be a port to add a temperature probe?

You emphasize reduced thickness, so super efficient single pass or did you actually manage to shove a double pass in there?

Amazing product and write-up. I wish other companies gave a function description of their product like you do. Unfortunately this is one Velox product that I will have to pass on due to the cost to benefit ratio. I can see this selling well to the FI track guy and race teams. But the NA track crowd will probably never have the need for this serious of a setup. Am I wrong?

1) The shop car has our hood louvers. I did not notice a reduction in water temperature with the OEM radiator when I added the louvers (still NA at the time). However, reducing pressure (and heat) in the engine bay most certainly helps the radiator do its job. I can't quantify how much it helps from logs though.

2) We have plans to develop an oil to water unit capable of handling a decent amount of heat. However, and we could be very wrong here, we thought it best to produce this as a stand alone unit. This increases the choices the community has.

IE:
-Not everyone (or anyone maybe) will want to run this radiator. Let alone a more expensive one because of an oil cooler in the end-tank. They could run the water to oil unit with *name your brand here* radiator.
-Not everyone will want to run a water to oil, oil cooler. Placing the oil cooler in the radiator increases the cost by about $400-$600. That's a lot extra cost for something some people will not use as they want to use an air to oil.

It's unlikely, see above response for our thoughts on this. We could be wrong though so please let us know if our thoughts on this are wrong.

That can easily be added.

Reducing thickness increases airflow through the entire cooling stack. This is paramount for cooling the water temps down, especially when the FI guys are shoving these large 3" charge air coolers out front (me). Air resists going through these units because of the pressure required to "push" through them.

It is a single pass design. From our studies at my past employer, in an optimized design, a double pass increases cooling capacity 7%. Only 7%, and that is when a double pass is optimized for the water flow the water pump is pumping at. You can actually reduce cooling from going to a double pass.

From past experience, a radiator this size would not benefit from a double pass. It could actually hurt it, especially with a thin radiator core like what we spec'd out.

You would be correct.

The biggest benefits I see from a unit like this are:

-The core: It is extremely efficient, light, and durable. This thing is built like Fort Knox as far as cores go, I've seen them wad up in 45-degree angles and still hold pressure. They burst at something like 80 PSI!

-The fan arrangement: With how we designed the fans/package, we reduce the thickness significantly from OEM while retaining fans that can pull through large cooling stacks. This is great for the front/top mount turbo guys that need this space. We continue to use high-performance fans instead of low profile. This is a big deal when you actually think about how electric fans work. Fans have to pull through static pressure (cores create a restriction). Low profile fans can pull a reasonable amount of airflow at 0 static pressure, but fan operation without a core is useless to us.

I may write a blog post regarding the above since it seems to be completely overlooked, even by manufacturers.


Well, I'm glad I'm at least getting to respond to some messages :thumbup:. Trust me guys, I understand the costs and I don't mind if I never make another one. All the hard work was already done, it doesn't hurt to ask the question. We would need about 5 or more people to do a production run if it gets to that point.

Thanks and keep the questions/suggestions coming,
Eric

What is the approximate weight and fluid capacity difference between stock and this unit? Does the A/C evaporator core still being upstream have a major impact at all on the efficiency of the radiator or is it really minor?

@VeloxEric: have you thought on making it dual rad incorporating oil rad like Jackson Racing one?
Also i wonder which design should be more efficient, like in your pics with all the rad area uncovered, or one with shroud on area not covered with fans?
BTW, how about as another product - making shroud kits for front of rad (preferably universal, to fit most rads) to smoothly direct all the air hitting front rad grill opening to rad?

I'm pretty sure he's answered all of your questions between his two posts in this thread.

If you decide to go ahead with the radiator plus oil cooler, put me down for one (you need five people?). My Robispec unit is still holding up but I'll have to replace it at some time since many of them have leaked.

1/8" npt port was added to this one :thumbup:
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I didn't weight it, this will be heavier than the OEM unit for sure. It has slightly more fluid volume (OEM is a 16mm core, this is a 27mm core, ~ the same tube spacing) and is constructed of all aluminum (plastic is lighter). This unit will be lighter than all the thicker offerings on market, in both dry and wet weight.

Yes, the AC condenser most certainly affects cooling.
-It increases the temperature of the air the radiator sees.
-It adds restriction to the overall cooling stack, aka less airflow through the unit.

We have, but as stated earlier, we would rather offer each separate so that end users can pick and choose which unit he/she wants to run.

No shroud is more efficient at high speeds, fan + shroud is more efficient at low speeds (typically under 30 MPH).

Front shrouds are typically referred to as duct work. I created some specifically for my build which actually made a decent impact on cooling at speed. While making them, I made the decision that I couldn't create a kit that would work for everyone, it's too kit/car specific. So we will not be creating anything like this for the foreseeable future.

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All of these photos and more are located in the Velox Shop BRZ build thread... http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...=101812&page=6

Looking great Gordon :).