Heater core recommendation?

Cannot comment on longevity of a performance rad heater core yet, but warms up my hole filled cab great. Before replacing mine I had never torn apart a dash nevermind doing a heater core. Took me 4 hrs and was very simple. I keep a heater core hose connector on hand for longer drives in case of a failure, cheap insurance.

I carry a bypass hose as well.
 
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Don’t let stories scare you. It’s really an easy repair. No need to remove the steering wheel….just use ratchet straps to hold the dash off. I had the HVAC box out in about 1 hr. With cleaning the box, repairing a door, replacing the evaporator and heater core, and reinstalling it….it was about a 5 hr job. I charged the AC myself after pulling a vacuum on it. AC is ice cold and heat is nice and hot. I got the heater core from Rock Auto

Yeah I'm not too worried about the job, I just hate the idea of doing it just to install another core that's no less of a ticking time bomb that the one that's barely leaking.
 
Being that I work for a heat exchanger manufacturer I'd love to try building one but i won't be able to make one this dense. Brassworks says the OEM tubes were 7.5mm and we only go down to 3/8", odds are the tube spacing is tighter than we do, and I know we don't do 30fpi. There are fin enhancements that can make up for some of the fpi but I can't do much about the tube pattern. My bosses aren't gonna spend 6 figures on new tooling for my hobby project so I'd just have to see how much space I have to work with to see if the tube count could be comparable enough to even try it.
 
Being that I work for a heat exchanger manufacturer I'd love to try building one but i won't be able to make one this dense. Brassworks says the OEM tubes were 7.5mm and we only go down to 3/8", odds are the tube spacing is tighter than we do, and I know we don't do 30fpi. There are fin enhancements that can make up for some of the fpi but I can't do much about the tube pattern. My bosses aren't gonna spend 6 figures on new tooling for my hobby project so I'd just have to see how much space I have to work with to see if the tube count could be comparable enough to even try it.

I think the smarter play is to hunt down another one that works well out of another OEM application and find a way to adapt it in.
 
I think the smarter play is to hunt down another one that works well out of another OEM application and find a way to adapt it in.

You're probably right but I wouldn't even know where to start with that since I don't have access to a warehouse full of heater cores, or as far as I know, a database of their dimensions.

I checked with a coworker and confirmed my doubts...we sell up to 20fpi, might be able to squeeze it to 24fpi but the tube pattern is the bigger problem because it's not just an adjustment to a machine, it's set by a very expensive die. Our tightest spacing is 3/8" tubes in a 1" equilateral triangle which means to match the tube count mine would have to be 3.5" thick, or I could fit half as many tubes in the same thickness. The larger tubes makes it not a full 50% loss but it leaves me with probably 90% of the flow, 64% percent of the primary (tube) surface area, and about 70-80% of the secondary (fin surface). I'm sure it'll make warm air but it won't be singing the hair off my toes hot that I am used to.