Published 2012
Installing a Champion Radiator in SPL311-25090.
Firstly let it be said – it doesn’t fit, at least it doesn’t just “drop” in for ALL YEARS. In fairness, Champion states that the radiator only fits SPL through 311-25000 and we clearly missed the mark by a day or two of production. Why this should make a difference, maybe it is the steering box, I don’t know. Perhaps someone could shed some light on that particular aspect.
According to 311fan "It seems the "model" that Champion used to make a radiator was an EARLIER model. On my 1966 1600, the Champion bolted right in. The bolt holes lined up to mount the radiator to the vehicle, and the other holes lined up to mount the stock fan shroud to the radiator."
Anyway, we made it fit and this is how we did it. Others may have better, more elegant ways, but this is what we did – eventually.
Problems: 1.The shroud locating holes didn’t fit the holes in the radiator 2.The radiator holes didn’t fit the radiator mounting braces. 3.There was marginal clearance overall necessitating snipping a small piece of metal from the body 4.The “air dam” plate under the radiator was not wide enough (at this point we removed it pending its’ effect on overall cooling).
The basic idea was to insert a piece of aluminum plate between the shroud and the radiator so that we could drill holes to match up each piece.
NOTE: The stock radiator hose worked fine (with a little bit of heating)
. The yellow arrows show the location of the holes to locate the shroud, the blue arrows show the countersunk holes to attach the plate to the radiator. .
This photograph shows the plate installed on the radiator. The two screws are for positioning the shroud.
Shroud sitting on top of radiator.
Installed radiator. Holes in the radiator braces had to be elongated with a jigsaw to allow for positioning of the radiator.
The arrow points to the bit we had to snip out. It is located on the passenger side right below the lower radiator mounting bolt. We just took about ˝ inch out of it. This gave us about ˝ inch clearance against the steering box.
If anyone has any other ideas, solutions, thoughts, please contact Peter Harrison (TOAD SAN) (818)-448-3181