Radiator for vehicles, having improved mountability into vehicles

Claim 1

A radiator for use in a vehicle having a vehicle body, a water-cooled engine mounted in said vehicle body at a central location thereof, said enging having at least one cylinder projected toward a central portion of said radiator, said radiator being adapted to radiate the heat of hot cooling water from said engine, said vehicle body including a cooling fan disposed to direct air to said central portion of said radiator, said radiator comprising: a plurality of radiator-forming elements juxtaposed and joined to each other, each element being formed of a pair of half elements joined together in an abutting manner, each half element having: a partition wall extending along an axis of said half element from a first end portion thereof to a point in the vicinity of a second end portion thereof, a substantially U-shaped groove extending around said partition wall, and a flange formed along an outer peripheral edge of said half element; each pair of half elements being joined together along said partition walls and said flanges thereof, the partition walls and flanges of the half elements of each elements being aligned with each other so that a substantially U-shaped heat radiating passage is defined within the element, said plurality of radiator-forming elements thus containing a corresponding plurality of U-shaped heat radiating passages juxtaposed to each other, the parts of said radiator-forming elements positionally corresponding to said central portion of said radiator being shorter in length than the other parts of said radiator-forming elements, whereby said radiator assumes a substantially U-shaped configuration adapted to avoid interference of said radiator with said at least one cylinder; a water distributing chamber disposed at the first ends of said passages and communicating therewith, said water distributing chamber being supplied with cooling water and distributing the cooling water into said passages; and a water collecting chamber disposed at the second ends of said passages and communicating therewith, said water collecting chamber being supplied with cooled water from said passages; said U-shaped heat radiating passages extending in substantially the same direction as each other, such that said water distributing chamber and said water collecting chamber are closely juxtaposed to each other.