I continue to make progress toward my goal -- except when I'm not.
And I'm not making progress when I have to take things off the car and redo them. Today, I'm referring to the radiator.
This afternoon, I drained the coolant out of the engine so I could remove the radiator. This was partly planned and partly unplanned. The planned part involves permanently installing the cooling fan and attaching the radiator to the frame. See, in my mad desire to get the engine started a couple months ago, I used zip-ties to mount the radiator and a wooden frame to hold the fan. I haven't wanted to take the radiator back off since I won't be able to run the engine until it's back together again, but in the name of progress, I had to do it.
It's just a hunch that my temporary installation wouldn't pass inspection anyway so I got an aluminum box to hold the fan (painted black) and I'm working on a way to hold the radiator correctly. As it turns out, mounting the radiator is not easy. The unit is designed to stand vertically (as it would be in most cars). In my case, it is tilted about 45 degrees so the weight of the radiator, fan and coolant is resting on four thin aluminum tabs. I'm sure that over time with the heating/cooling and vibration, it will crack (ie, leak). So I'm spending a little extra time now to avoid a big problem later. I expect to tackle that tomorrow.
The unplanned part of this detour is to fix a coolant leak (I won't pass inspection with that either). Again, in my haste to get the engine started, I saw that the water inlet on the engine didn't fit correctly and I tried to glob extra sealant on it, but it immediately started leaking as soon as the engine turned-over. Now, I can hopefully fix it permanently.
My plan is to make an adapter that will help the coolant channels line up correctly. I'm not sure why I even have this problem, but it may be because the parts I used on the engine span nearly 40 years of design evolution. Anyway, I cut a blank out of aluminum and have started to drill holes through it at precise angles so the coolant has a place to flow other than on my garage floor.
Here is a picture of the water inlet and the aluminum blank on the lower left.
And here is a picture after the first two holes were drilled. I'm testing the fit on the engine side.
Hopefully, this will work. Unfortunately, I won't know until I put it all together again and start the engine.
In other news, I'm almost done with the brake lines. I'm going to try to finish those tomorrow too. After that, I'll be getting close to having a 2000 pound go-kart!
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