[The Fab Ford]

Forgive me for my ignorance, my first Cobra customer is going to drop a car off to me this sat morning and I have a question about radiators. I have a small sole proprietor fabrication shop in Watsonville ca and have been building street performance and open track Mustangs and Cougars for 6 years. I am a competant fabricator/welder and am comfortable with taking on a Cobra but I just need to get more familiar with the aftermarket hardware that will install the cleanest and not compromise a period correct theme. The owner bought the car off of Ebay and immediately had an engine knock and what sounds like the loss of a cylinder. I listened to it, and the first thing I noticed was inconsistency in the starter speed like when you crank an engine over with one spark plug out. I started it and immediately noticed a very poor throttle response followed by a knocking and turned it off. The car has a 308 stroked 351 built in the mid '90's with a 400 crank and rods, world product heads and a roller cam of mild duration. He told me that the person that sold it to him said "go ahead and spin it up to 8000 rpm and if you hit 8500 for a short blip by accident, don't worry she's built to handle it" OH MAN, I thought here's the start of his problems. No cam with less than 225 @.050 duration needs to go there, plus its a hydraulic roller. My experince with hydraulic rollers is that if you want big spring pressures and or high rpms you need to go solid roller because hyd roller lifters were never designed for this kind of abuse. So my first thought is he probably has eaten a lifter or two which could mean destruction of the cam and potentially a liffer bore also. My thoughts are if he has this little knowledge of how to drive this kind of hardware, I better get rid of the Duraspark ignition and put in an MSD with a 6500 rev limiter, this will keep the rpms down to something that a hydraulic roller and a set of long 400 rods can deal with. He also complained that the guys at the local muffler and radiator shop were unsuccessful in stopping an overheating problem, they rodded the radiator and repaced the hoses and thermostat. I took one look and he has what appears to me to be a 1969 351 Windsor with AC (27"core) radiator with some poorly fabricated tabs to hold it to the chassis, the rad is laid back with the top towards the motor such that its so close to the steering rack that they couldn't fit an electric fan that would shroud the entire core and so put a small electric pusher fan on the front. The real eyesore was that they put a cheap autoparts store flex fan that points more at the top tank than at the core. This is where my main questions start for you Cobra experts: All of this is going to come out, I want to install a dual puller fan assembly to the back of an aluminum thermal disspersant coated radiator and remount the assembly so that it clears the steering rack. I have seen pictures where it looks to me like the radiator tips to the front of the car at the top instead of towards the motor. Also since I dont have the surge tank on a 351 like on an FE motor, I would like to get away from a top tank radiator and go to a crossflow. So my question is....

what company makes the cleanest and simplest to install crossflow radiator, Griffin, Fluidyne, Howe etc etc?????????

Next, are there any brackets made that tilt the top of the radiator forward, or do I need to fabricate them? and due to body profiling is this an option?

Lastly, does anyone sell a kit to install an airbox to direct airflow from the front body opening to the radiator or do I need to fabricate this also?

Any pictures of radiator installs would be helpful

OK i had to come back and edit, after surfing around i saw body off pics and it looks as though the chassis tubes wouldn't permit any other angle of the radiator , so I'll probably just have to figure out how to bracket it farther forward but at the same angle.

Thanx,
Tom