Radiator Replacement Advice

[Matthew_McLellan]

Ok so I will start with a bit of a background on the problem.  I live in Washington State and I was driving over Snoqualmie pass going east.  Just after the mountains there was this long straight away where I was in the left lane going roughly 80 mph and about one-hundred yards up there was a semi-truck.  It was about 10 pm and very dark.  The semi blew a tire and I slowed down to 70 and moved one lane left.  At the last second the blown tire was in front of me and I hit it head on.  I immediately pulled over and looked in the front to see coolant leaking out, so I quickly got in my car and left to try to get out from the middle of nowhere before I lost too much coolant.  A few days ago I pulled the radiator out and found the small crack and sanded it and put on a marine epoxy and liquid electrical tape on top.  The leak came back.... Tomorrow I am going to try plastic welding it to see if that does anything.  If that fails I am going to just buy a new one from O'Rileys and use that.  I am hoping this fix works as I am not in a job right now, but if I need to buy the radiator I can.  I consider myself fairly advanced with cars.  I just wanted to ask if anyone has experience with this and if there is something I should pay attention too.  Lexus quoted me roughly $1200 to do a replacement, so you can probably see why I am just going to buy the $150 one on O'Rileys.  Thanks for the help!

 

Radiator:

https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/b/murray-heat-transfer-4283/cooling---heating-16773/radiator-20386/radiator-11357/02ac48565f9e/murray-heat-transfer-radiator/8012919/5643573/2007/lexus/es350

[Sam M]

Matthew, try to get denso radiator ( genuine) . It costs almost $100 from Rock Auto. I replaced mine two months ago by myself. It was super easy work. You only need wrench size 10 and pliers for hoses clamps. 

You can find many videos on YouTube that shows you step by step. 

Good luck.