Radiator and Condenser Cooling Fans

[Henry Frye <thefryes@domain.elided>]

Greetings,

I seem to have sorted through my ignition problems, and now the engine will
run long enough to actually warm up. When I started taking things apart I
realized the DPO didn't really tighten things down well. The coil was real
loose. I cleaned up all the connections and bolted everything back
together. The Lumenition system seems to be working fine!

I think I have a MkII radiator and expansion bottle in my MkI. It's a 4 row
radiator with a metal tube running from the passenger side of the rad
(remember, USA spec LHD) to the drivers side, then a rubber hose into the
expansion tank. There is a brass plug on the filler neck of the radiator,
and the expansion bottle has the 20 lb. pressure cap.

The metal pipe that runs across the top of the radiator had broken off at
the union to the radiator. The DPO did a miserable Rube Goldberg (that's a
Heath Robinson to you Brits!) job, he stuck about a 3 inch rubber hose into
the hole where the metal hose broke off the top of the radiator! He
attempted to seal it with RTV (Permatex gasket sealer), but this leaked
once the coolant heated up a bit. No surprise there.

Once the car cooled off a little, I noticed the expansion tank had filled
to capacity. What happened is the 1 or 1 1/2 inch the rubber hose protruded
into the radiator allowed the coolant to siphon right into the expansion
bottle at cooldown. I had noticed the coolant level always dropped, but
chalked that up to an air pocket in the engine. I kept adding small amounts
of coolant, and the coolant always found it's way into the expansion tank.

So I braized a small section of the metal pipe to a small piece of flat
copper. I removed the radiator and soldered this over the hole in the
radiator. I intend to use rubber hose to connect the radiator to the
remaining section of metal pipe.

The repair appears to be fine, but the thread on Stag gurgling got me
thinking. Where the metal pipe to the expansion bottle enters the radiator,
is it supposed to stick down into the radiator? My repair is flush to the
top of the radiator with no pipe dropping down into the coolant.

I also removed my condenser cooling fans to service the fan motors. Both
were quite seized, but survived being taken apart, cleaned and lubed. They
really push a lot of air. Has anyone wired these fans up to act as
ancillary cooling? I would imagine having these fans come on (without the
A/C) when in traffic would go a long way in solving the legendary Stag
cooling problems.

Thanks in advance!

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 Henry Frye - thefryes@domain.elided - Connecticut, USA
 Stag MkI  	Getting Sorted Out
 TR3B   	Driver          
 TR250 X 3	The BIG Project - Will Be Worth the Wait
 Homepage	http://members.iconn.net/thefryes/