anyone ever shorten a radiator (by themselfs) for a chopped grille shell? i did a search and found some talk about it, but no pictures or details.
I gave it a go. In fact it might have been my thread you saw? I did a horrible job of it and the entire project went to scrap. But I learned enough to believe I could pull it off the next time around if I had to and really took my time. My main mistake was starting with a busted up junker - plenty of holes in the tanks that someone was able to fill with solder. Once I put the heat to it half of the tank melted away to reveal long cracks and tears. Mistake number two was thinking I could heat the header and pull it off in one piece. It ended up getting bent and eventually torn. The smart thing to do would be cut the entire top or bottom tank off an inch or so into the core, tear all of the fins out with pliers, then carefully heat and remove each tube from the header panel. From there you just chop the core down, remove a few rows of fins, deburr the tubes and slide everything into place before soldering it all back together. Easy.
I have done it before. I removed the top tank first then cut the radiator core an inch longer then where i needed the header to sit. removed the tubes from the header , cut out fins in the way, heated and cleaned the tubes with a stainless wire brush applied flux to the tubes and slid the header on. mocked it up to make sure it was in the right place. sodered the tubes from inside the tank with them still long so there is no chance of closing them off with solder. cut the tubes to legnth then solder the top tank back on. It takes some time to do but when you need a custom size it is cheaper then having a custom one made.
Slag, I read your old thread as well. sounds fairly easy. Do you have any shots of the thing going together????? I never got the chance to to do ours. The boys took the thing down to the rad shop and had it recored when I wasn't looking...
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