lone73
Well-known member
Just thought I'd post a few things I learned for the sake of the archives if nothing else.
I was on the fence on whether to buy the aluminum rad from one of the hot rod parts suppliers (Northern I think it was?) or stay with a stock style. I finally decided to stick with stock as I don't have too much free time to modify brackets to make a generic radiator work. I found the cheapest radiator from Advance and ordered it, $250 plus tax. Took about 3 days. It was a chinese knockoff but I didn't care as long as it worked and fit. Well, I got half of what I was after. It does work. The support came from TLD and is what you get these days for a '73 with center mount shroud bracket. I ended up having to drill out the two center mounting holes to make it work and buy a couple of nuts to run the bolts into. Not a big deal really.
The major surpirse was with the radiator. It was the correct part for a '73 to '77 but the lower hose connection was pretty far from being pointed in the right direction to make it work with a stock '73 shroud. Maybe the later shrouds and connection are a bit different, maybe the chinese dude that welded this pup together was havin' a bad day. Either way I was faced with returning it for a refund or trying to get it modified. I decided on the later since I was in a hurry (as usual). I took it out to a shop still bolted to the support along with my shroud and had him correct the angles on the outlet. He only charged me 30 bucks and did a pretty decent job. Two angles had to change, had to desolder it and swing it down then relax the bend in the tube . It was nearly a 90 degree bend. It was also a welded two piece outlet as opposed to being bent on a machine like an exhaust pipe would be bent, like the original.
After I got it home and got the rest of the foam seals on it I tried to install it and discovered that there was no way I would be able to do it w/out removing the headlight vacuum cans. I was just banging up the fins on the condensor with them in there. Got those out and the radiator/support assembly dropped in without too much trouble.
As an aside, I did find as I was reassembling the support/condensor/radiator asembly that there is quite a bit of space around the a/c condensor that will allow air to bypass it. I felt that this might be partially to blame for the poor cooling problems that most folks experience with C3's. I went ahead and added foam strips around the top, right side and bottom of the condensor so that (almost) every bit of air that the fan draws thru the shroud would be forced thru the condensor also. Haven't had a chance to recharge the a/c and check it out yet but when/if I do in the next few months I'll definitely report back if anyone is interested. My a/c is converted over to 134 and (when it worked) was only fair in its cooling ability. It is still a VIR system also.
The upshot of all this is that I'm not sure it would have taken any longer to install the aluminum generic given the trouble I had with the "stock" radiator. If I had to do it again I would probably try out the aluminum one.
regards
.
.
.
I was on the fence on whether to buy the aluminum rad from one of the hot rod parts suppliers (Northern I think it was?) or stay with a stock style. I finally decided to stick with stock as I don't have too much free time to modify brackets to make a generic radiator work. I found the cheapest radiator from Advance and ordered it, $250 plus tax. Took about 3 days. It was a chinese knockoff but I didn't care as long as it worked and fit. Well, I got half of what I was after. It does work. The support came from TLD and is what you get these days for a '73 with center mount shroud bracket. I ended up having to drill out the two center mounting holes to make it work and buy a couple of nuts to run the bolts into. Not a big deal really.
The major surpirse was with the radiator. It was the correct part for a '73 to '77 but the lower hose connection was pretty far from being pointed in the right direction to make it work with a stock '73 shroud. Maybe the later shrouds and connection are a bit different, maybe the chinese dude that welded this pup together was havin' a bad day. Either way I was faced with returning it for a refund or trying to get it modified. I decided on the later since I was in a hurry (as usual). I took it out to a shop still bolted to the support along with my shroud and had him correct the angles on the outlet. He only charged me 30 bucks and did a pretty decent job. Two angles had to change, had to desolder it and swing it down then relax the bend in the tube . It was nearly a 90 degree bend. It was also a welded two piece outlet as opposed to being bent on a machine like an exhaust pipe would be bent, like the original.
After I got it home and got the rest of the foam seals on it I tried to install it and discovered that there was no way I would be able to do it w/out removing the headlight vacuum cans. I was just banging up the fins on the condensor with them in there. Got those out and the radiator/support assembly dropped in without too much trouble.
As an aside, I did find as I was reassembling the support/condensor/radiator asembly that there is quite a bit of space around the a/c condensor that will allow air to bypass it. I felt that this might be partially to blame for the poor cooling problems that most folks experience with C3's. I went ahead and added foam strips around the top, right side and bottom of the condensor so that (almost) every bit of air that the fan draws thru the shroud would be forced thru the condensor also. Haven't had a chance to recharge the a/c and check it out yet but when/if I do in the next few months I'll definitely report back if anyone is interested. My a/c is converted over to 134 and (when it worked) was only fair in its cooling ability. It is still a VIR system also.
The upshot of all this is that I'm not sure it would have taken any longer to install the aluminum generic given the trouble I had with the "stock" radiator. If I had to do it again I would probably try out the aluminum one.
regards
.
.
.
