It flows better, the material is better and quality is better and the failure rate is lower than the square cooler.

 

I feel that is a misconception. The failure rate is "lower" because there are far less circular coolers out there than square. Higher flow doesn't make it better. Slower flow might mean more heat is dissipated through the material... it is a cooler, much like a radiator. If it flows through too fast, then it will never cool properly. Also the square cooler will have a larger surface area to dissipate heat as well compared to the circular.

What's the difference in materials, I've never heard of that before? I was unaware of that.

 

The design is better in my opinion. If it were not why would the bulletproof "improved" egr cooler replicate it? It has less surface area. Fewer welds and less bends to fatigue. It dosent abosrb as much heat as you stated meaning the is less potential metal fatigue. Comparitively the round will out flow the square cooler. This is not the issue though about effectiveness of the heat transfer though since most of us are less concerned with hugging trees and more concerned having a leak free coolant system. The consensus comparing the two coolers is that the round cooler is better. The consensus from people that I know that work on them is that they rarely if ever see a bad round cooler. Yes the production number was less being as they made that style for 1yr vs the square for 4yrs.

 

What on earth does tree hugging have to do with cooling efficiencies? Bulletproof offers BOTH types of coolers, they leave the choice up to you. They are only modifying busted coolers. If they sell more round cooler than square that would leave me to believe that they are getting more busted round coolers. All they do is strip the insides and weld in some stainless tubing. I've never seen an EGR cooler fail because of structural integrity of the OUTSIDE of the cooler, meaning the square structure vs. the round structure doesn't seem to make a difference for strength. It's usually the weak piping on the inside of the cooler that fails. As far as the tree huggers are concerned, I agree, I'd rather have a leak free system, and IMO a full delete is the best answer. I am simply throwing ideas out about some of the misconceptions I hear about the round vs. the square. There are some very knowledgeable 6.0 people who agree that the square failures vs. round failures is skewed because of the the production runs. I know Dough @ GoGo was one of these people.

I still dont get where the tree hugging part comes in? Cooling efficiency is a good thing. If it cools better, then that means the coolant is as hot and failure is less likely...

 

Maybe you need to look past the out side.... The round style incorporates round tubes where gasses pass for the heat exchange. The square coolers use a radiator style heat exchanger. This is what I'm refering to. The round and square cooler from the factory are 2 completely different designs out side and in. Bullet proof uses the round tube design and claims they use a heavier gauge stainless than factory. Bullet proof uses this design in the round cooler and retrofits this design to the square cooler.

 

This I did not know. Thank you for clarification. I merely only knew the outside designs of the factory coolers. I knew what bulletproof used for the inside of their coolers, thoug they do still use the square and round coolers. I still can't say whether one is better than the other though as both have had far different production runs. Going to be hard to come up with a solid agreement on that. Thanks for the info.

 

Well I've had both the round and square egr coolers in my truck, the curent one which has FAILED is the round one, the last time the truck was in the shop for an egr r&r the dealer installed a round one saying "that it was an improved design" and that failure rates where "almost nil"? well he was wrong it's been in there for about two years now and it's doing the same thing as the first one did .... LEAK...so it's going into my scrap metal pile just as soon as I get it out of there.