The rad is holding fine.
The truck never overheated and still doesnt.
The 16 psi radiator cap looks fine.

I sometimes find the overflow tank empty, I add a bit of coolant, but it never went over the "max" level.

Also when I drive off after a 5 minutes stop, I can hear a "gurgling" sound coming from the firewall, probably bubbles stuck in the heater core.

Anyways I will change the radiator, but I would like to find why it had expanded like that so it wont happen to the new radiator.

 

Garbage build up in the tubes, and fin separation from them as well. That's a tube that is getting ready to let go..... It will pick the worst possible time to do so.

Gurgling is a sign of low coolant, or/and, an air pocket in the system.

Before you replace the radiator, do a thorough flush/descale on the cooling system. Might just as well get all the crap out of the rest of the system before replacing it.

May wanna pressure test the system, and see if you can find where the coolant is going. Check the passenger side floorboard as well... it accumulates coolant when the heater core starts leaking.

 

I spotted that "radiator" issue , during my last fuel stop at the end of a 4000 miles road trip,I dont know for how long I was driving like that. Hauling a 12500 watt genertor and a new crate engine for one of my projects. Driving at night in the middle of nowhere as usual....

I guess I'm a lucky bastard

 

does that bulge indicate a past freezing event, where it stretched the metal, but not enough to rupture it ?

 

That is another very good possibility. Though I would think it would be more pervasive than that????

Water does do some odd stuff......

 

If we were at another time of the year I would have thought about freezing coolant , but I do all my maintenance on my truck and I open the hood frequently to keep everything in check.

I really dont think my coolant could freeze during summer , especially in Florida's 100 degrees weather.

but it would have been my first explanation of this weird phenomenon if it happened in winter.

 

Does it EVER freeze in florida???

 

in north florida it does, one year we had below 30 weather in ft lauderdale ! Im from Canada so I was not impressed as much as the locals..

 

my dads old ram had that same problem...he ran it like that for about 2 years, while hauling a 31ft. camper....never had a problem....my best friend bought the truck, and hes put about 12K on it, and it still is going good...

thought this might be of some help

 

thats exactly what my wallet wanted to hear , but down the road I will still change the rad.. Maybe someone here can chime on who has the best deal (bang for the buck) for radiators for our trucks.

I would also like to know what caused it, since I dont want the new rad to suffer from the same treatment..