SHED: 1988 NISSAN PATROL GQ
THE KETTLE IN OUR GQ GETS A MUCHNEEDED COOLING UPGRADE.
IT’S no secret that GQ-GU Patrols aren’t exactly famed for their cooling systems, having been the butt of ‘kettle’ jokes for all eternity. Sadly, during my very first offroading trip in the Vic High Country, I found the memes all too true with the TB42 in our 1988 GQ Patrol wagon. The Pooey did the four-hour road trip from Bendigo to Jamieson with no problems, but as soon as we left the tarmac and started the climb to the top of Mt Terrible things went really south.
The temp gauge rocketed to boiling point within minutes heading up the first track, and the Patrol proceeded to boil over three more times before making it to the top. This was just as much of a problem for the transmission as it was the engine, given the trans cooler is housed within the radiator. Granted, the car was fully loaded with four days’ worth of camping gear, water and fuel – but outside temps were barely hovering over 12°C (this was a June long weekend trip) with nice, cool air outside and the car still refused to stay cool.
We managed to get it through the rest of the trip by taking the bonnet off for any climbs, but I knew even with all the kettle jokes about Patrols that surely a fully functioning cooling system shouldn’t be this bad.
My first suspect was the radiator fitted by the previous owner. It may have been a big three-core alloy unit, but I wasn’t convinced about how well it actually flowed and it also didn’t seem to hold pressure very well.
The other culprit in my sights was the clutch fan. The plastic fins themselves were fine, but the fan
wouldn’t cool the car down at idle when it got warm and unless the car was moving quick enough to get airspeed through the radiator (such as normal road driving), and temps would rise.
Rather than pay a fortune for a new viscous hub, I decided to ditch the current set-up and go all-new and improved. I’d read about an upgraded, bolt-on clutch fan kit from Qikazz 4x4 and Camping, which uses a Mitsubishi truck fan and custom-made adapter to bolt to the factory water pump. At $550 it wasn’t by any means cheap, but online research told me that this fan combined with a good radiator is the way to go.
The upgraded fan kit only fits with a single-core standard-size radiator, but that was fine by me. I was more than happy to ditch the puss-nut ebay three-core alloy rad for a genuine one, and luckily enough I managed to get my hands on what was probably the last brand-new genuine Nissan TB42 auto radiator in the country.
The install process was a fairly simple one, the radiator went straight in with no fuss and the only tricky bit was getting the fan shroud back down between the clutch fan and radiator without damaging the fins. I also used this opportunity to fix some leaky trans-cooler lines going to the radiator.
The in-and-out job only took around two hours with some ball scratching, but I made sure I set aside an entire afternoon to bleed the cooling system. This step often gets glossed over, but make sure you take your time, put the heater on full blast and get all the air pockets out and give the car a decent drive to make sure it’s happy. Once that was done, I topped up the transmission and she was set.
Since fitting the new radiator and fan, I’ve given the GQ a few solid stretches on some local tracks and I’m delighted to report that I haven’t even got close to boiling over. The car will happily idle for long periods without getting hot, and I recently took it through some very long and steep hill climbs in much warmer temperatures in the Pyrenees State Forest with no dramas at all. And the fan is much quieter than the factory unit too!
The real test will come when summer hits and I give the cooling system a real workout on and off road but for now at least, I’m happy to say the issue is fixed! Now hopefully, the only time I’ll be boiling water when I go off-roading is for a nice cup of coffee in the morning.