Bolt In

Helped Marv with the final stages of installing a new radiator in his '96 Collector's Edition Corvette.

The plastic tanks on the original radiator had failed.

Because there was nearly no price difference between the stock part and the shiny, sexy all aluminum unit; he went with sexy.

Because the aluminum radiator was a three row instead of the stock two row, he emailed the seller to ask if it was a "bolt-in" and received a reply that it was.

I cynically commented, "yup, you sure can use bolts to attach it."

Sadly I was right.

Everything on the new radiator is thicker.

Mox nix.

Marv trimmed the rubber mounts and shortened the duct-wall between the fans.

As with everything on a C4, you've got to remove ten things to get to the one thing you want to work on and the manual tells you that you need to remove 40.  I got there in time to help with reassembly, which was handy since when some parts come out, they kind of guide themselves and don't when you try to put them back.

The LT1 and LT4 engines with their reverse cooling flow have some quirks about refilling the cooling system.  The low hood on the Vette means there's lots of high spots in the system, which trap air.  You basically have to fill it, almost overheat it, shut down, "burp" the hoses and open a steam vent.  Lather rinse repeat twice.  Then apply a lot of lateral g to slosh the fluid around and get the last bubbles to get up into the overflow bottle.

Before the old radiator started leaking at the bottom hose fitting, Marv was seeing 208˚ in and around town with spikes to 211-212˚.  On the shake-down we saw 207-208˚ steady.  On a speed run the old radiator would slowly climb to 225˚ as the heat made by the engine overcame the ability of the cooling system to shed it.  Last night the speed run got a slow climb to 211˚ where it held.

An extra row of fins and an extra half gallon of fluid seem to help.

As a bonus, no puddle under the car!