Classic industries radiator finally gave out

71DodgeDemon340 said
Radiator showed up today, looks great, got it mocked up in the car, needs a little adjustment here and there but not too bad, one thing i wanted to ask is how much clearance should be between the fan clutch and radiator core? Right now without the radiator being tightened to the core support i have roughly 7/16” between the fan clutch and core, im thinking when its tightened up it might open up to 1/2” of clearance, is this enough?

1/2” should be fine, that’s about the minimum you’d want but it’ll work. Might want to make sure your engine and transmission mounts are in good shape as you won’t want a lot of movement there.

Rat Bastid said
I forgot to mention I read this link, and if you read it correctly they make LESS power with coolant temperatures as high as 280-290 degrees. LESS power. Plus it’s harder on parts. Plus they run 100 PSI on the system.

They do it for aerodynamic reasons, not to make more power.

Yeah, I said right up front it was for aerodynamic reasons, check my post - “air flow and drag”.

My point is that it’s stupid to tune your street car based on what a race car does. Pro-stockers try to run 100-120* at the start of a run. NASCAR runs 300*. Both are detrimental for the life of the engine and highly specialized to that type of racing and class rules. 180*-200* is perfectly acceptable for a street car, even 210* wouldn’t bother me a bit as long as it could maintain it. 160* is basically the minimum operating temp to prevent valve train wear and quite frankly isn’t realistic for a real street car in real world situations.