The Radiator Hokey Pokey

Note: This work was actually done about a year and a half ago, we just started the blog late.

As stated in the last post, one of the first priorities was the radiator. The radiator was known to leak. In fact, it was so leaky that my brother had removed it from the car a few years before.

Replacing the radiator was seen as a relatively simple project to start with, and for the most part it was. The radiator is held into place by 4 bolts, 2 on each side. The plan was simple:

1) Buy a new radiator, upper hose, and lower hose

2) Bolt the radiator into place

3) Fill it full of coolant/water (note: The thermostat had been removed years before, as a result we didn't have to worry about getting the car hot to circulate the fluid).

We purchased the parts online from a company called NPD (National Parts Depot). They are very well known among the Mustang Restoration hobby. While, not displeased with their service, you will find in future posts that we have gone predominately with Mustang Mania, a local company, for our future part needs.

Upon receiving the new radiator, we noticed some differences between it and our old radiator. First, the new one had 2 extra ports in it for connecting a transmission cooler (something our car doesn't have). We simply left these ports open. The second thing we noticed was that the new one had a welded in draincock. Specifically, it had a welded in draincock that didn't work.

The draincock seals, it just won't open to allow for easy draining of coolant. We decided that the few times we would have to drain it we could just pull the lower hose and made the executive decision to use the radiator as is. Little did we know how many times we'd have to drain the radiator.

After installing the radiator in the car, we noticed another difference between the new radiator and our old one. The new one is wider. The original radiator had 2 rows, the new one has 3, thus it is wider. The NPD catalog states that you should have a clearance of at least 1/2", preferably 1" between the radiator and the fan. Ours was closer to a 1/4". So, we put the radiator in, took the radiator out, and went in search of a shorter fan spacer. After installing a shorter fan spacer, we had the proper clearance and we were good to go. This was the first lesson of this project, check the relative thicknesses of the old versus new radiator and make sure your fan spacing is proper.

Our second lesson wasn't realized until many months later. You will notice that our above plan didn't include flushing out the engine block. When a car sits for as long as ours did, it's important that you thoroughly flush the entire cooling system. Rust, debris, and corrosion will clog up the system and adversely affect cooling performance. Since doing this original project, we've had to deal with overheating issues partly caused by insufficient circulation. We probably could have saved ourselves a lot of effort if we had done a good job flushing the cooling system at the very beginning.

So, one small project with at least 2 lessons learned. We're making good progress.

Every Project Needs a Plan

In order for a project to be successful, certain things must exist. First, one must have a goal. Then you have to have certain rules and guidelines. You can't just go about it all willy-nilly. Then you need to break it down into small, manageable projects. But most importantly, you have to have funding.

The Goal
When we first set out, the car had been sitting in the garage for approximately 15 years and was missing some very vital parts (radiator, working gears in the transmission) and had a few extra things it shouldn't have had (boxes on top of it, gasoline in the gas tank). So, our first goal was to get it running. Basically, this would serve as a validation that the car was worth it. But, we needed a long term goal. Once again, we can't be all willy-nilly about this. This is where involvement in the MCA comes in. 2009 is the 45th anniversary of the Ford Mustang and to celebrate, the MCA had a big event in Birmingham, Alabama. They are planning a similar event (but bigger) for the 50th anniversary. So our goal is to be able to drive the car to the 50th anniversary and show it there (we're hoping it's in Detroit).

In addition to the above, we still have the main goals of:
1) Learn something about cars
2) Spend time together working on a car
3) Keep it stock

The Rules and Budget
Since one of our overriding goals is to learn something about cars, we can't just simply take it to somebody else to do all the work. That said, there's a lot of things that we don't know how to do or don't have tools to do properly. We hope to learn how to do many of those things, but there will be some things that we will have to pay somebody else to do. But, we're going to try to keep that to a minimum. This rule helps us with the next topic, the money. Theoretically it's cheaper to do it yourself.

We don't exactly have a big pile of money just laying around. So, we can't spend a lot of money all at once. Instead, we've gone with the approach of spending a small but sufficient amount of money each month. In our case, $200 per month. This allows us to split up the work into small, manageable projects. For those projects that require more than $200, we just have to wait a few months. With this approach, hopefully 5 years will be enough time.

The first two projects were what caused the car to be garaged to begin with:
1) The radiator was extremely leaky (and had been removed by my brother years before)
2) The transmission was broken (a pattern that has been repeated for the whole life of the car)

Subsequent projects tackled those things that deteriorated in the last 15 years. But each of these things are possibly worth their own post, so I must wait on the details and leave you in anticipation.