2004 MCS, presently 152K. About three years ago I replaced my leaking OE radiator with a Mishimoto. About one and a half years later it developed a leak. Mishimoto honored a warranty claim without any difficulty. Now, another year and a half later, the replacement Mishimoto is also leaking. I'm perplexed, since the build-quality of these all-aluminum radiators appears good. Anyone else with a similar experience?

 

I messed with a Megan Racing Radiator and Mishimoto a while back. Megan cracked at 20k and similar with the Mishimoto. I have now since switched to Koyo and haven't looked back. I typically steer clear from the two above brands because I haven't had too much luck with them, nor have friends. That being said, Mishimoto does make some good quality parts, but just from my personal experience on them and friends with their radiators I decided to pay a little extra for the Koyo.

 

Pelican: Thanks for the bad news. Wish I knew that before.

 

I have had friends who have had no issues with Mishimoto before and it could just be a bad batch, but for me it wasn't something I wanted to have to deal with so I switched up to Koyo due to hearing lots of great things about their radiators. Mine has been about 2-3 years and it's still in great condition. Koyo and CSF are great brands and are what a lot of my friends are running in the race community.

Here's CSF - http://www.pelicanparts.com/catalog/..._pg1.htm#item3

 

I am so sorry that you have had an issue with our products! It seems to be that you may have had been caught in a production time that we had a some failures. I personally am running one in my 240 that has been a track car from day one 2009 and I have had no issues. It makes me upset that you have had such a negative experience with us. If you would like to warranty this product out with me I will be more then happy to try and get you another rad.

Please feel free to contact me at support@mishimoto.com for any other questions!

~Sammyy

 

Now that's what I call customer service !

 

Thanks to Mishimoto for their response, above. Yes, they have excellent customer service. Source of my leak is somewhat unclear. I have replaced thermostat (which after 150K was still original) and that reduced obvious leak considerably, but can't yet rule out possibility of a slight leak in the radiator. Will continue to monitor closely and will report back.

 

Old *** thread but… being I’m in my second replacement for the same issue again… I think I e found the issue. Seems like the oem fan rubs against the radiator with time and punctures it. I’ve replaced my fan the first time maybe thinking the old rad fan was wobbling or whatnot. Bought new one in fcp just to weed out the issue again… and now less than 15k miles after or so … same crap again. Granted they’ve been great at replacing it… it’s kind of a dumb thing to be dealing with every other year or so… with it not being something on our part. Seems like it’s a clearance issue with oem fan smh

This is the new one…

This one as you can see is dated 2019 almost 2020 by the time I installed new one.

 

If you'll do a search on this same subject, you'll find my posts. After three (3) failures on my 2005 MINI Cooper S, I gave up on them. No, the fan didn't cause my failures. They were found to be the solder joints at the intersection of the core tubes to the tank.