Radiator Shroud & Mounting Kit with Fitting

Background

Why did I need this? I have been to a few classic car shows now and have spoken to owners of these first and second generation Mustangs who have had problems with overheating. When I got my car I was slightly lucky to have a brand new radiator ready to go in, the bloke obviously didn’t get round to putting it in. Lets just say the previous owners mechanical prowess should be limited to opening a tin of beans and leave the car alone!

Anyway – I was recommended to get one of these and I don’t see how it would hurt to have it fitted as I didn’t seem to have one when i got the car. Besides, the fact that you can lean over the radiator with a seven bladed steel fan spinning away with no protection around it is not ideal. A simple forgetful moment will almost certainly result in removal of a finger or four, then I wouldn’t be able to drive the car properly, so it needed doing.

The idea behind the part is two-fold, to draw the air through the radiator to aid water cooling and then to blow the cool air over the engine block as well. The shroud makes the process a lot more efficient rather than just sucking air from the sides.

Parts:

The was no box with the shroud, just the metal shroud itself. To mount it I needed the brackets in order to step it away slightly from the radiator main body.

The Shroud is a reproduction of the original part and therefore should fit easily in place. The brackets I suspect have been tweaked a little since the original days as I am not sure if there was such a thing as 3 row radiators back in the mid sixties for these cars. (Anybody able to confirm this for me?)

The finish on the shroud is a satin look black paint, there were a few tiny scratches on it so I was extra careful not to damage the finish during the fitting of it. The edges were sharp in a few places where the cut outs were made, and managed to put a tear in my latex gloves within a minute of holding it! The holes were nicely finished and slightly elliptical to allow for adjustments up and down. Where the Shroud was cut down to allow for various fittings especially near the bottom, it was able to be bent out of shape a little, so again, care was taken during the fitting. It wont go out of shape during normal running, I expect it was done during the transportation stage to be fair. I mentioned this now as it is relevant a bit later on. (Make a mental note here).

The brackets and screws. The brackets were finished in a matching black paint, the screw clips were more of an anodised finish the self taping screws were a nice polished steel finish. The parts had to be put together in order for the screws to hold in place. This was a simple case of  squeezing them over the end of the brackets. Make sure they are the right way round on all the brackets.

Fitting:

This was a simple job and took about no more than and hour from start to finish.

Firstly you had to remove the fan from the water pump by taking out the four retaining screws (The red circles show the bolts already removed). The fan sits on a shaft and just pulls of. Make sure you don’t pull to hard and end up smashing into the radiator fins themselves as this is not an ideal scenario to encounter.

With the fan out-of-the-way, the shroud would be so much easier to position in place. I removed the radiator mounting bolts them one at a time, placed the brackets onto the bolts and redone them back up.

The shroud will only fit on one way, as the brackets are stepped then the holes are slightly higher on the right hand side of the radiator.  The four screws to simply screwed into place and it was fitted, allowing a gap of around an 1/8″ (inch) clearance from the shroud to the radiator.

Replacing of the fan was simple enough, although there was now slightly less room to tighten up the bolts.  Manual turn of the fan to check the clearance all around was all that remained to do. Depending on the model and option of the fan, you may not be able to do this part without allowing the water pump to free spin, I could turn by hand as I have the viscous coupling option.

Job done, skin all intact, no bruises, no rude words were uttered 🙂

Issues:

Well, I came across two minor issues; The first was the top radiator hose clamp was just in the wrong position to allow the shroud to sit flush where it should do. To cure that was a simple case to undo it a fraction, twist it 45degrees and re-tighten of it soon sorted that out. The second was the clearance of the fan all the way around. Recall of mental note at this point; There was one blade that appears to be fractionally longer than the others on the fan. Where the shroud was slightly distorted at the bottom, the single blade was just catching it in one small place. A little gentle persuasion of the bottom part to moved bent slightly away by hand sorted that out as well. Now there is a good even quarter of an inch clearance all round from the fan blades. No more catching of the blade. Sorted.

Result:

It looks good, and I expect it will do the job to aid the cooling, only time will tell when I start running her properly to see if I get any issues.

The fitting was simple, there were no issues to re-drill bits out or anything like that. It just fitted well and looks good.

I could moan about the sticky label which was stuck on the shroud at the top, I then had a sticky mark there which I had to remove.

Rating:

The only down side was that the metal itself was little flimsy and could have being a fraction thicker. For that reason alone I will knock a mark off.

Rating: 9 out 10

Conclusion:

It’s a common fact that the early Mustangs were prone to running hot. Upgrade the radiator, the fan itself, better water pump, or Evans Waterless Coolant will all make a difference.

This shroud certainly made a difference to my car keeping it cool. The best parts is that there is now a cover around the radiator fan to help avoid accidents with a few pound of metal blades spinning at ridiculous speeds removing bits of your body if you’re not careful enough.