Been a looong time since I've updated. Had not been able to find a viable used radiator for my Gen 1 anywhere and due to the AUD being toilet paper + morbidly expensive freight, I've not even thought about shipping one from ebay so I went on a field trip to my go-to yard in search of something that might be useful. I was close to trying a radiator out of an early Volvo (one that still had brass tanks and copper cores with a remote filler reservoir), then trawled though a bunch of different wrecks until I decided to go for a slightly harder target and try my luck with L300 vans. I lucked out on this path before when I found a brand new, unused radiator from a 90's van but the core height was way too tall to fit but I did spot one in an earlier model 2.0 that the core measured up to be the right size. If you've ever worked on a van engine bay, this is one sucky job to tackle. Me and the apprentice (my boy) started a fight with this thing that ended up with me taking half a litre of fouled coolant straight to the face before it finally gave up.
In comparison, the 2.0 van radiator has the same size cores and the inlet/outlets are oriented the same but the mounting frames on the sides are completely different. The fact that it had coolant in it indicated that it hadn't rotted out and the cooling fins although a bit battered, were all intact - this purchase was out of desperation and I hadn't figured out how, who or where was going to be able to modify it for my needs. A search around via the net for shops locally that did repairs came up with 5 local shops - 3 of them had shut down and not edited the listings. Great... there was a shop not far from my dad's place that was still in business but the trick was will they do the mods and how badly was I going to get gouged for the privilege? It was a family owned business (tick this one as a positive) and after talking to the guy he assured me there were no problems with my instructions (second tick earned). So this is what it came down to - swap the mounting frames I'd already taken off my dead radiator onto the donor radiator and graft a thermofan sender bung into the bottom tank and pressure test the thing.
He calls me 3 days later - "it's done, pick it up when you're ready. I had to replace the drain cock on it as the tap was chewed up - that'll be $70..." EPIC WIN (third tick of approval, awesome). Only thing I wasn't hot on was the acrylic spray can paint job but I planned on repainting it myself anyway.
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