Been out in the garage after work with my head down running beads on aluminum for a few nights. Talked with Nathan a bit and got some pointers, watched a couple of you tube videos and decided that I was going to tackle this radiator build on my own.
I have learned a bunch of stuff through this process and is why I like building **** on my own rather than farming it out to others.
Clean clean clean. This stuff likes to be clean. My process was acetone wipe down, then scrub really well with a stainless wire brush, when I thought it was clean enough scrub again.
Not being an aluminum welder I was not used to this much cleaning and found that the cleaner the surface was with the best fitup possible netted the best welds.
So I started to mock up the radiator, I first built the upper mount that nests in the top of the radiator since it didnt need to hold water or be perfect since you wont see much of it and it had pretty descent results.
So on we go. The plan was to be able to keep the existing upper radiator panel since I have a lot of work into it and like the way it turned out. You can see though not mch wiggle room in placement of the filler. I had to make a small spacer to get the filler up about 1/2" to clear the panel.
All in place and fitment should work great. Probably need to redo the lower radiator hose but upper should go right back on.
Not being very familiar with aluminum and welding some thin stuff here to mismatched thicknesses was a little nerve racking but all in all I am pretty happy with the results. The radiator had just the core and end tanks on, all of the fittings and filler were done by me.
I have been sweating this for weeks. Now that its done I can move on. Get the fans mounted up, button up all of the plumbing and reinstall all removed components, fill with fluids and get ready to start the tune process again.
Cheers!!!
Sean