Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Put an American V8 in a British sports car and you’re gonna confront some challenges. The TR6 radiator cooled 2.5 liters (of straight 6). The new mill is a 3.5-liter (215ci) V8 in need of more cooling capacity. Grabbed a 215 radiator from the back seat of a picked over ‘62 Buick Special out at French Lake and had Carlberg Radiator rebuild it with a more efficient core. (Photos of both radiators here.)

But the narrower TR6 radiator sat between rails that the wider 215 heat exchanger has to sit in front of. To keep the fan close behind it–has to be for good airflow through the radiator–I needed several fan spacers (in this case an ad hoc collection of 1/2-, 1-, and 2-inch examples).

I’m using a fan clutch both because they’re cool and because the fan mounting holes are spaced out for one. My fan is a rare heavy-duty piece from an air-conditioned ‘62 Buick Special station wagon, again from French Lake, which won’t bolt directly to the fan pulley or the spacers affixed to it.

The fan clutch poses its own challenge because it obstructs the holes for its mounting flange: you can’t mount it with bolts because of the angle, so you need studs (threaded at both ends). To put the fan an inch from the radiator where that needed to go, I needed 4-1/2 inch studs–not an off-the-shelf item. So I bought some 5/16-inch bolts five inches long and had Shawn at Quali-Mac machine shop cut them down to 4-1/2 inches and put an inch of 24-pitch thread on the cut-off end.

Now we’re talking. Radiator and fan sitting pretty good. Now I just need to find the mother of all flexible universal radiator hoses to snake from the water pump to the radiator outlet pipe and we’re in business, or at least ready to start and run.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Car parts, Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.