Watch out for the "teeth"

At first glance, this appears to be a really well set up radiator. Lots of air intake area, sealed so all the air goes through the radiator, decent air outlets. Hell it even looks halfway clean.



Then we look a little closer, and find FOAM. After the black 911, I HATE dealing w/ foam. Maybe this isn't as clean a job as I thought.



UGH!!! The sides were FILLED w/ foam. At least they used some black spray paint to make it look pretty.

There is also scotch tape showing at the front edge. Scotch tape should be an integral part of any good conversion. Also notice the zip tie holding a washer in place... NICE!!!!!



Lets look underneath.... Scared yet?
They used one of the bolts for the front of the A-arm to hold part of the radiator shrouding in. YIKES!!! Then there is the 1/4 inch thick chunk of steel across the front edge, I think it doubles as a jack point. After all of that there are the "teeth" I don't know what to say about the teeth....



Ummmmm, Yeah......

Ohh yeah, at the far right of the picture there is a piece of aluminum angle iron. We have no idea why it's angle iron and not flat stock, but we have no idea why there are 8 million machine screws holding this thing together.



Lets step away from the radiator for a while, I'm getting nauseous. The rear shocks look kinda funny. It's because there are sections of PIPE placed between lower spring perch and the spring perch mount. Just crank up the spring pre load till the ride height is right, and screw what it rides like. Always good thinking.



What next??? Hell, lets set it on fire. That is the stock 60PSI fuel pump running into a fuel pressure regulator in an attempt to get the pressure down to the 3-5 PSI that street driven carbs like to see. That regulator thinks 15PSI is WAY to much, and I would hate to see how it handles 60PSI. At least the plastic fuel filter is on the suction side, and not under pressure.



As the radiator conglomeration is removed we got quite a laugh. the nice shiny aluminum plate on the left of the picture is/was a door threshold!! There must not be any stores other than Home depot in this guys town. At least they had LOTS of sheet metal screws to hold it all together.



We have found the best indicator of wall of shame material to be wood. If you want your car featured here, use wood.



Just in case all the machine screws break, this guy ran a piece of all thread across the bottom of the radiator, some cables around it, and the cables to a turnbuckle (sorry no pics, it was buried in the foam) and tightened the turn buckle to pull the radiator to the front of the car.



After removal. there is a big freaking hole in the floor of the car, directly between the front A-arm mounts. Wonder if that was structural or not.



This is what we are left to work with. All of the corners were cut farther than they needed to be, which creates a HUGE stress riser, and ends up tearing the sheet metal. We ended up removing the rest of the floor, using nice rounded corners (you can see the hole saw hole in the back already cut) and then welding in a new panel.


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