Hi Mike;
All good advice for sure, and thanks for that.
The car overheats on the road, at a steady 70 mph the temp reaches 220 and stays there. In the city after a highway run, the temp will slowly climb to 230 or so. I have a 16# rad cap which prevents it from boiling over.
I agree the rad and heater core should have been cleaned when the engine was being rebuilt, and I was told it was. (I didn’t re-build it). The heater core throws a lot of heat (why not at those temps!), and I have an infra-red thermometer that I have checked the dash gauge with. I took the gauge apart and set it at 200F with my IR thermometer, taking the temp reading from the base of the temp sending unit in the manifold. I also have taken readings with my IR at points all over the rad, and they were consistent with water flowing through all corners.
So I had no reason to suspect a plugged or dirty rad or heater core.
The new alloy rad was custom built for the Tiger, and no doubt was made by one of the well known suppliers that you mentioned. I just don’t know which one. It wasn’t on eBay, but on the CAT list.
It is, as I have said, beautifully made, and now that I have moved the rad panel, it bolts right in! I suspect there was some mis-alignment from work done in the past. I’m sure the body job I did was at least the third or 4th. There were signs all over the car that is was used in some kind of competitive endeavor in the distant past, so it very well may have had a front-end shunt and they got it back more or less to where it should have been.
I am not unhappy to have this alloy rad in there, for the extra cooling it will afford, and it looks pretty"cool" too. (sorry!)
So thanks again for your help Mike. I think my application of a small jack in appropriate places when no one was looking did the job, and I didn’t have to cut out that controversial cross brace to do it.
Cheers,
Dave
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