The Great Pumpkin - '71 Duster

Not to temper all the good cheer of getting the motor in with crappy stuff but this wouldn't be a project of mine without the requisite hurdles, soooo...

I purchased new motor mounts from Schumacher last year along with new trans mount. After the motor went in with the new mounts, I put the radiator in place and of course, there is less room than there was before. Mocking up the clutch fan showed that it would be butted up against the radiator core - no good. Somehow, I lost a 1/2" of room between the radiator and the water pump pulley.

I spoke with Schumacher this AM and we concluded that the mounts were right for the application and installed correctly so the culprit had to be the radiator. The guy on the phone thought the old mounts were probably stretched backwards allowing the motor to sit further back. After I hung up, I went out and looked at the old biscuits, the bolts were in fact crooked so maybe that was right on some level but not 1/2". The trans mount was destroyed too so perhaps that combination of old, worn out mounts made everything sit farther back than normal. Who knows.

So, on the horn to Griffin - I explained my case and the conclusion was to cut the mounting brackets to gain the necessary clearance. Grrrr... the tech guy did admit that Mopars seemed to be difficult in this regard and gets calls all the time with crap like this. Great.

The solution is what it is but I'm not particularly happy with this situation. This radiator, while being marketed as an 'exact fit' 'based on a factory part' is definitely not what they claim, at least in my case. Their mounting brackets seem to put the radiator at least 1/2" away from the rad. support. The one I had prior to putting the Griffin in was a 26" that was made to work but it sat right up against the support. The lower radiator hose is now also going to be pretty short. So OK, they based their part on a factory one but maybe they were drunk when they made the cad drawings. I dunno.

It caused me problems when I first got it two years ago too, should have known then. It was a struggle to install a factory shroud and clutch fan. I basically destroyed what was a nice original shroud to make it work with their mounts and had to get a short fan clutch. The clutch seems to be a common problem but I didn't know that until I ran into the problem. OTOH, it is a very nice radiator though. The core is larger, it's really light and does a good job cooling my junk.

So what to do? Cut up my $600 radiator and make it work or go find a generic one that fits. Leaning towards finding a generic one for now but I'm not sure, I hate to buy redundant parts. An electric fan won't help much either unless I can find one that's only an inch or two deep. Most are around 4" which won't help.

I'm wondering now what else is going to be a problem. Can't wait to find out.

More to come.