The new Aluminum radiators take it one step further. Solid hand welded construction, high-flow tubes, increased fin count and overall higher efficiency ratings. The obvious advantage of an aluminum radiator versus a copper/brass version has a lot to do with weight savings, but there are actual and significant cooling benefits as well. Even though traditional brass and copper materials are better conductors than aluminum, the extra strength of the aluminum allows for larger tubes with lower wall thickness and more surface area. Even an aluminum radiator with fewer tubes than its traditional counterpart can potentially offer improved cooling, as the larger tubes make more efficient use of available core space. Thus even though copper is a better conductor, use of thicker tubes in copper radiators actually makes them retain heat in the cores for longer duration than aluminium ones as aluminium tubes are much lighter and dissipates away the heat faster.
Aluminum is much stronger, allowing the use of considerably wider and lighter tubes. Wider tubes allow more direct contact between the fins and the tube, increasing the radiator's capacity to dissipate heat away from the engine. An aluminum radiator built with 1" wide tubes with a .016" tube wall turns out to be approximately 60% lighter than the same copper brass radiator. The 1" tube increased direct tube-to-fin contact and cooling capacity by roughly A 2 | P a g e D o c : L X / M K T G / A L A D / 0 2 25%. Therefore, a 2 row aluminum radiator with 1" tubes is equivalent to a 5 row copper brass radiator with 1/2" tubes.
