My next big task is getting my radiator installed. After a bunch of research, I ended up going with Cold Case for my radiator. They seemed to offer good quality and were about half the price of the bigger guys like BeCool and Dewitts. The quality so far looks good, and I ordered mine with their shroud and cooling fans.
To attach the shroud to the radiator, they supply some rivets or self-tapping screws for you to use. You have to drill your own holes in the shroud and the radiator (maybe the reason for the lower cost). Riveting the shroud to the radiator didn't seem like a great idea if I ever had to remove it. I also didn't really like the look of self tapping screws. So, I invested in a Riv-nut gun and decided to go that route and use some nice button head screws for a clean look:
I also wasn't crazy about the polished look (there's honestly nothing polished under my hood right now) so I decided to paint the shroud black:
One of the issues I'm running into now is fitting the radiator in the stock space. I'm running into 2 problems:
The first is the new AC condensor I bought doesn't quite match the original, which is causing the tubes to hit the side of the radiator. (I checked and the radiator is the same width as the stock one, which is what I originally thought the issue was.) I guess my options here are to use my old stock one, order one from my local autoparts store and hoping that one is right, or cutting and re-soldering the tubes on my new one.I'm leaning towards throwing the stock condensor back in for now to keep things moving.
I'm going to stick with the stock one for now since my system was holding pressure OK when I took it out.
The next issue is the new radiator is thicker than the stock one, so of course my upper radiator support does not fit. Eventually I'd like to go with a nice custom upper radiator support, but for now to get the car running I am going to modify the stock one to fit. I made some little extension brackets that work to hold it in place until I can access to a shear and brake to make a custom upper radiator support:
