Oh Bother... and a query

[Mike Wattam <101714.1343@domain.elided>]

How sensible, I already like your daughter.  She wouldn't give lessons to
my wife, would she?

I wish there was a really easy answer to the 'radiator' problem.

Basically, you want as much cooling as possible even if your Stag has never
overheated (to give it the largest possible margin of safety), so a large
capacity radiator is a very good idea.  There are however some traps. 
because of the design of the water pump (=pathetic) you need a rad core
with large passages suitable for a low pressure water pump.  Also because
the body frontal design does not put lots of ram-effect air through the
radiator, you need one which gives a very large cooling surface with very
small flow resistance.  The standard radiator is supposed to have 3 rows,
many fit a 4-row radiator, some a 5-row but the latter can get VERY close
to the fan.  The Stag radiator has all three rows in line to minimise wind
resistance, and it is difficult to find a modern radiator core built like
this.  

From this you will gather that 'modern' radiator cores are not much good on
the Stag.  If your old core is standard Stag and your Stag did not overheat
with it, go for something very similar or better, bearing the above factors
clearly in mind.

Otherwise, buy a radiator from Tony Hart (HRS Garages) in England, his
radiators are the business.  He will ship to the USA.

The BTW reference is probably a typo reference to BThU = British Thermal
Units.  Noah had a nice ark, and that is where BThU's belong.  It is a
measure of thermal capacity in terms of heat output/drop per unit of area.

I would tend to go for the standard fan set-up as this seems to work very
well.  If your Stag has aircon, use a by-pass switch to allow the aircon
fans to be used to cool it all down under adverse circumstances.  Some of
the other American members will also tell you this.  

The accessory shop add-on electric fans are usually pretty light duty
affairs and will not give you anything like as many hours use as the aircon
fans, and again much less than the standard fan with viscous coupling.

You can also improve the cooling efficiency by adding a fan cowl (if
missing), Glenn Merrell one of the American members of this e-mail group is
having some made.  I can assure you that fan cowls greatly aid cooling
efficiency, especially at idling.

Happy Stagging.

Mike Wattam
Triumph Stag Register (UK)