Doing away with the ever leaking reservoir on my. 61, 390 motor and I came up with this setup. Anyone see any problems as I was told it should be higher than the radiator by one person. True or will this work? Thoughts.
It's higher than the top of the tank, it'll work. I had a filler in the upper hose like that in my '51 Pontiac Tin Woody wagon (RIP), it was fine.
I've considered the same thing in my '63 a time or two. I've always been able to find and resolder a tank that wasn't in terrible condition, so I haven't done it - yet. I would suggest a recovery system though. FEs produce a lot of heat, so there will be a fair bit of expansion.
My suggestion would be to run this as a closed system with a remote expansion tank. The reason why Ford used those tanks was to ensure that the radiator was as full as possible. As the coolant heats up and expands, it has no place to go except onto the ground. I've seen more than a few of these era Fords with the tank gone but in all cases the radiator was replaced with a conventional top tank style rather than the OEM cross-flow.
I raced 390's on a circle track for years and always had an expansion tank. Surely saved from puking water out during and after a race. Ford put them on there for a reason.
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