Tims Garage

Hi, It's been a little while. We've been waiting for a park to arrive and finally I have received my new al Unfortunately, originally I was going to run with the Griffin radiator from RPM Worsports, but their automatic version has the addition of a fill cap that mounts under the driver'side air box mount for the factory air box and I'm not able to run that because I live in California and in order to meet emissions I have to have a stock appearing intake track. So as a result I wasn't able to use that radiator. Instead I had to order the significantly more expensive Howe radiator from Performance Auto Works and it arrived yesterday and the first thing I noticed unfortunately and we're going to go through a little unboxing of this radiator. I haven't had it out of the box yet but I did notice that unfortunately Howe needs to do a slightly better job of packing the radiator box because as you can see one of the radiator outlets actually punched a hole through the box which hopefully isn't a problem but we'll find that out shortly. So I'll in keeping with some of the new millennial ways to look at things this is an unboxing of a Howe al So I'll see if I can get a grip on this thing and get it out of the box. It seems Alright, well it came out pretty well and in looking at the spout it does not look I'll go through fitting everything and show everything works but just to compare the radiator to the stock radiator. Let'see if we can have a look at this. We've got the mounting of the radiator looks fairly identical. Obviously it is somewhat thicker including in the mounting area right here so we've got a little longer bolts and some other things that we need to do but for the most part with the exception well actually I can see that this is dented it's all dented in right here so I'm not sure if that's going to be a problem or not. I'll be putting a call in and see but I suspect that's going to work. So that said I've got the new radiator and we're going to be all set to start reassembling the car provided everything fits up and works okay. I do know that the fan assembly I'm told requires a little bit of trimming so I'm looking at the fan assembly itself and it looks So I'll go ahead and do that but first I'm going to make sure that this isn't a problem with it being slightly tweaked in that's not making me very happy at this point but we'll see if that'something that can be corrected. Alright well radiators here I get to put the car together provided that is okay and we'll move forward from there. Thanks. Hi just thought I'd show just how quickly and easily this can be repaired. I've worked on vehicles my whole life and something like this So here's what I'm gonna do I've got a socket that fits very closely inside the opening and I just there we go we've now got the opening put back together nothing's cracked it's no longer depressed and we have it corrected. Alright sometimes the easy fix is the best fix. Okay so I've managed to get the fan shroud mocked up against the Howl radiator and as you can see I've got quite a bit of gap between the mounting surface and the flange that's here and that gap looks Now I've marked out where I'm gonna begin the trimming on the sides and I used a half inch masking tape there and I used quarter inch masking tape along the top edge of the fan shroud so that I can go ahead and figure out how much I need to trim and in looking at the what looks Okay I've gone and marked out where I'm going to be cutting it and I've marked out with a line at the 5 eighths of an inch mark all the way along the edge of the fan shroud and I'm using one of these which is an air-powered hacksaw to be able to cut through the piece very easily and you can see the line that I've trimmed now neatly it cuts it along that line. I'm gonna be able to trim this off it's gonna be a little difficult to trim in with a short blade around the upper bracket but I'll go ahead and get that done and I will give Now I'marking the bottom and I'marking this 3 sixteenths of an inch I used quarter inch tape to break out the line I've traced it with a little bit of silver paint marker so that I have a nice cut line that's left on the panel for me to cut along with the air hacksaw. Okay and there we have it I've got the fan shroud all trimmed and I've taken 5 eighths of an inch off the sides and a quarter of an inch off the top and bottom you can see the strips that I cut off I used an air hacksaw in order to be able to remove it and then I used a die grinder to be able to When you trim off the top one of the things you will need to do is you'll need to grind down these little posts just a little bit on both sides on the top so that it doesn't interfere with the Howe radiator and it sits nice and flush so I'll show an image or a little video of what it looks Okay now we've got the fan shroud completely mounted to the Howe radiator you can see that the tabs now lock underneath the edge of the fan shroud so that's kind of clamped into the radiator you can see I've got it fitting very nicely around all of the edges of the radiator it's got a nice gap the only thing that I've got and I'm not going to trim it any further as you can see that there's a little tiny bit of a gap it's not very focused there let'see if I can get that focused got a little tiny bit of a gap there underneath the fan shroud to the radiator on both sides I'm going to take that up with a washer and as it stands right now I still get to retain the clamp the holes for the little push pins that are going to hold the upper splash shield or air duct in the car so I've got it all set I finally have it fitted I get to go ahead and install my Howe radiator you can see this radiator is substantially thicker than the stock radiator and I'm very excited that will be my next step okay here we go one last look at the Howe radiator with the fan shroud fitted onto it I've managed to get the fan shroud all secured got the tabs interlocking the way they're supposed to I've got everything fitted I've got the gaps nice along the top and bottom so that it is secured and we are absolutely good to go to get this thing installed I can't wait to do it