Radiator Repair Part Duex or is it Troi (Post #397) 10/6/2013

Why am I counting in French?
In Cherokee it is tsoi (pronounced “joey”).
In German it is “Dieses mal war zu viel”.

And in any language it is “one too many times”. I went back to Osborn Radiator for the repair. It is also the only place in Oklahoma City who still repairs radiators. As they have told me before, everyone else just wants to replace them.

Radiators are fairly inexpensive on modern cars. A radiator for a 2010 Ford F-150 XLT 4WD with a 4.6L SFI 8 cylinder is just 270.00$(US). That’s less than half a radiator for a Range Rover Classic.

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I get that its from England and all that but wow. I have thought about replacing the Range Rover Classic radiator with one from another model of automobile preferably one with electric fans.

But this time  it was just a leak, so off to Osborn. This leak surprised me with it’s location on the driver’s side. I was fully expecting it to leak on the passenger side where it has been weeping on and off for a year.

I had a problem with where the shroud and the big mechanical fan happen to come into contact. This as you can well imagine is NO BUENO. The fans on the Classic are prone to explode when they become damaged or start to crack. The “fan explosion” is legendary in the damage it causes. Think replacement hood, replace radiator, replace fan shroud, replace hoses, etc… Needless to say it is bad.

I have a clearance issue I have shown before. I had wedged a piece of wood under the radiator to prop the radiator up away from frame piece the lower hose had been coming in contact with. So this came to mind when I decided to fix it with a rubber spacer. i was kicking myself for tossing the bushings from the old shocks. They would have been perfect.

I shaved them down a bit as I thought the original rubber bits I found at O’reilly’s were too tall. It was a total guess but it turned out to be correct. I slipped them over the guidance pins on the bottom of the radiator.

I fitted the radiator and the fan and holy crap! it fitted perfectly. I didn’t have to wire the radiator back or fiddle with the fan shroud. Perfect fit.

Here is the radiator in place with the proper gap.

This moved the radiator up away from the mount you see there. And when I’m bouncing down the back roads of Oklahoma I can be assured that the radiator will not be banging the fan shroud and fan together and the radiator on the bracket. I am very pleased.

So…one more item down that I don’t have to deal with. The coolant is replaced too. I did have a bit of trouble getting the air bubble out. After a couple of runs to work, I got it all sorted out.

I also have started thinking about electric fans again. I even went so fart as to find a set of dual electric fans from a 1999 Ford Contour at Dollar Auto Salvage. As I pulled up I didn’t have much hope for this yard. It was tucked off the road in Choctaw, Oklahoma. But they had the majority of a large school bus filled with fans that had been pulled off various cars. And a HUGE amount of rat poop. The yard man said it had gotten cold so the snakes had probably moved out. I had boots on so I wasn’t worried too much having a Copperhead chomp on my leg. But it was interesting the yard man made mention of it.

I’ll be checking the fitting and sorting out the electrics in the coming weeks and months. I’m sure the Evil German Dude, who provided the above German translation, will be happy to help me get the electrics done the way they should be. I’m thinking separately wired fans with dual speeds.

That way one fan can fail and I wouldn’t lose all my cooling. And when the AC is on the fans would go at half speed to assist the front fans. There is a lot to research first. But that’s the current thinking.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.