Ah. Broken hose clip allowing the return hose to get loose. Bound to have another clip here some place. Huh. That's interesting (disturbing), the radiator is being held in by 3 bolts instead of 4, the bracket for the 4th has rusted clean away. It's official, radiator comes out. A spanner and a screwdriver later and it's on the ground. As much as I curse this thing some days, no one can accuse it of being hard to work on.
OK. The front of the radiator is all munted, whole sections of fins missing. Nothing for it now, needs professional help. Looking at the fan, I noticed it had 4 blades instead of 6, 2 (opposing) blades having been snapped off. Icky! That'll need replacing too, but that will be easy.
A trip in to Levin to the only radiator fixer in town and the good news just keeps on coming. The guy behind the counter took one look at it and said 'It's leaking there (point with ballpoint pen) too.' Yup, sure is, even I could see that.
Overheating is a total drag, so I just nodded when he said it would need a complete re-core and recondition. NZ$368. Ouch. No point wailing about, has to be done.
6 Days later, go and collect, pay the nice man (fair's fair, it looked like new, bracket neatly fixed and the whole thing repainted, even threw in a new pressure cap) and go to leave. Oh yeah, might as well have new hoses while I'm at it. It was at this point old demons came back to haunt.
Remember the engine had been replaced? The radiator hadn't and standard hoses didn't even come close to fitting. Compared the old hoses to what he had on hand and nothing matched. Still, directly across the road was a Repco outlet, surely they would have something to suit. Trot over, collar one of the counter jumpers and hand over the old top hose (turned out the bottom hose was ok, that goes back in), the guy tapped on his pc a bit, looked thoughtful and wandered off out the back. 5 Minutes later he's back with what looks like a brand new hose, you beaut!
Back home. In one of those moments when karma flicks you one, hanging up in the garage and left over from the property's previous petrol head owners is a brand new generic cooling fan. Once I reamed out the pilot holes it was a dead fit if about 20mm thicker than the old one. No sweat, the fan bolts had thick spacers on them anyway, just ditch them in favor of a regular washer each and all went together easily. Drop in the new radiator, the extra fan width proving no problem, reinstall the 3 bolts left over and find a forth from the bolt box and all looks impressive. Bottom hose with new clips on and tightened, top hose.......is about 70mm too short! Rude words. More rude words. Swear as I might, there was no way the new hose was going to work. Contemplate putting the old hose back on and hope the split I noticed starting doesn't blow through at an awkward moment. No, wont do, has to be a new one. Hmm.
The obvious solution here is to cut the hose in half and put in a metal tube spacer. Not what I hoped for but not the end of the world either. Just need to find a piece of pipe. Hunt high and low in the workshop. Nope. A piece of exhaust tail pipe from M-B would fit (store that lil snippet away for later, you never know.) but I don't want a steel spacer, has to be stainless steel or copper.
Next trip to Levin for groceries and I also cruise the main drag for a plumbing shop. There's one! Plumbing World, sounds perfect. A quick peruse of the pipe rack, and there in the odds and ends collection is a meter length of thick wall brass (!) pipe exactly the right diameter! Sure, the counter guy said, there's a hack saw, cut off what you need. Cut 6 inches off the end and guy tells me not to bother paying him, he can't be bothered working out what it would cost. Thanks, good karma to you!
Back home, spacer in with 2 new stainless clips, fill the radiator with anti-freeze and water and start up. As usual the last air bubble didn't want to come out, but some hose squeezing and engine idling later it burped a couple of times and all was well. A trip around the block showed the needle hold nicely just under halfway and I'm feeling better.
No reason not to get a Warrant of Fitness and start driving!
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