Did they have copper radiators back in the early days of first gens.?

I can not get a pic to load but there are a few things pointing to this being a copper core. It's heavy as hell and not plugged up, Held up all this time (early replacement at a body shop) and when looking at an angle down the fins, it's reddish.

Already have a new one, now I feel dum(mer). Thought it was time to refresh the whole cooling system (it is, time wise) as I had only changed rad. hoses once and that's it. I have changed anti-freeze a few times. I was shooting for 200K miles for a whole shebang type teardown but that is slow coming now and it sits a lot. Decided to dig in and really guys, it's holding pretty well.
One more thing though, I'm replacing thrmostat, oil cooler hoses (not soft like I feared, even after what now, 24 yrs.) and fan bearing housing (that was showing it's age as it was pretty easy spinning) but now that I look at all this torn down front and thinking I prob. don't want to go back this far again...I see a timing set with 10K miles and looks great but is 8yrs old now. I would at least do the water pump but it's all so clean inside.
Man the old days made preventive maint. so needed. This stuff now lasts.

Anyway, I have a non-leaking, maybe copper cored radiator but I guess the tanks are non changeable, right?

 

No the tanks can be changed quite easy for me.

In fact those radiators are all I use.

 

Where did they come from? Not Harrison right?
I can't find the brand but I looked closer and it's definitely copper.
edit: We do still have a couple of radiator shops, do they as a rule change tanks or is it just something someone would do for themselves? I don't know that I would trust a 20+yr. old tank over a new chinesium unit although I've spent now over 500 in parts and looks like I may have only fixed a sealed bearing that was getting loose.

 

I don’t know if it was factory but my 97 had a brass/copper radiator when I got it. When it started leaking I tried finding a similar one online with no luck though so I ended up just buying a cheap plastic/aluminum one. We’ll see how long it lasts.

 

A truck that old it might have been swapped in unless you bought it new.

Harrison had some Copper Brass radiators in the nineties.

Most times the cores are swapped tanks reused.unless you have major physical damage tanks last forever . I still use some from the eighties.

Because of the cheap china imports many radiators might no longer work on smaller vehicles just heavy equipment and large trucks more money to be made.

 

What started to leak ??

It would have been a simple repair for me.

Unless you had a 6" hole through the core that would take some time!!

 

If it's copper it's probably worth fixing. I just had a local shop test/braze/clean/paint a leaking copper radiator out of my 85 and they had it done in a day or so. I'm hoping it'll last a couple more decades

As far as Tacomas go the original 96 radiator in my Tacoma is aluminum with plastic tanks

 

it’s been a few years now so I can’t quite remember if it was just the core or the upper tank. I wanna say it was the tank had a crack but can’t say with 100% certainty. Thinking back now I wanna say it had a sticker on it that was not Toyota related so it was probably aftermarket but I couldn’t find it online when I tried looking it up.

 

I soldered a tank that cracked in Kansas on the way home from Arizona.

 

Yeah, I probably could have fixed it, but it’s a long time gone now.

 

OP,
The original radiator in my 01/97 V6 Taco 4x4 manual is aluminum with plastic tanks and is still serviceable at this point. I just changed both oil cooler hoses and a lot of other stuff: full timing belt kit with water pump/full valve cover gasket job/adjusted the valve lash. PartSouq had the best prices I could find on the OEM oil cooler hoses & quite a few other (but not all) OEM parts. Surprisingly, the original oil cooler hoses were quite solid even though they were heavily caked with dried mud from 26+ years of hard off-roading. Almost all the OEM hoses I changed still appeared serviceable both inside and out after a thorough pressure washer cleaning, so were kept as emergency spares. Good luck!

 

I bought them local. 75 bucks at Toyota here. I will say lining up original parts next to new ones (all Toyota) the new stuff is shit. Sorry, it is. The Aisen fan bracket. The Aisen thermostat. The radiator hoses. All lighter than original.

 

It was changed in 2003 after the original owner ran it up on a car trunk. Hence, a buddy buying it, then me.