Beautiful... and its really handy for me that you are one step ahead of me on my swap

 

Well, I got my radiator and I got my intercooler. Time to figure out how to mate them to the core support. There's a lot of good info on here, so why reinvent the wheel? You'll see flavors of familiar designs, albeit with my own flavor, and some I just slugged my way through.

The first thing I wanted to do was fill all the unnecessary holes. The crudely drawn red circles are where to holes for the intercooler tubes will be.





I also cut off the top mounting ears so that I could lay the cooler closer to the support.



I'm figuring they'll go about here. I cleaned up the corner where the cuts were made. I want it to look factory.



To get it to sit as flat as possible, I made these cutouts at the top of the support for two corners to fit into.


This is the box I made for it.


And welded in place. The cooler lays flat now, now I just gotta come up with some mounts.


That's good for today. Why do the smallest things take the most amount of time?

 

Got my shiny new radiator which I was hoping was going to be a drop-in. I took measurements of my core support, and got measurements of the radiator from the website and I figured it would slide right into place.

Looks pretty good from this angle huh?



Well, here's the problem. It's just a hair too wide. And I mean a hair, I could have probably forced it into position. Not gonna do that obviously, but it does have to sit between those flanges.


So, I ended up drilling out the spot welds so that I could move both the flanges outboard slightly.





Along with being spot welded to the main support, they were attached to this side support which I also had to drill out. You can see by looking at it that more room can be gained by straightening it out and re-bending it further back.


Straightened out.



Here's the test fit. I ended up with just enough gap on either side to allow for movement/vibration. It's up tight in this photo for the test fit, but there's plenty of room. "Like a glove!"



Now for some mounts. I was able to source some new isolators locally, but thanks to Brandon (co425) for offering up his spare set. Once I got them in my hand and I was sure I had the right measurements, I got to work on the mounts themselves.

I cut a couple rectangles off of this 3/16 plate that I've been using forever. Remember my front crossmember build? Yeah, same plate. I'm getting my money's worth here.



Once I had the dimensions correct, I cut my holes for the isolator nipples. The hole was just the right size to get them snug.



Here are both sides, ready to be welded on.







I was originally planning some bracing for these, but they turned out to be rock solid so I'll leave 'em alone.



Now for the upper mounts. This took a bit of figuring, but I finally came up with a suitable design. First I got some steel strips. Not the 3/16 plate, but rather I just cut a length of scrap angle iron right along the corner to get two rectangular pieces.



You can probably see it coming together here. Just needs a 90° bend and some holes.


Cut to shape and bent.



Had to find my center point for my holes, but this is more or less where they'll end up.


Big holes for the upper isolators, smaller holes for mounting to the core support.


Here they are completed and powder coated along with my lower intercooler mounting brackets.

 

Nice work. I cut my flanges off completely. Good to know the mishimoto radiator will fit. Can you post up some dimentions please? Center core thickness, tank thickness and overall width. I bought my stock replacement with the intention of upgrading to the same as yours later on.

 

Sure thing. The dimensions on the website were kind of lacking. I called them, but the guy said he would have to get into the engineering drawings and he'd have to call me back, but never did. I get off work tomorrow, I can get those for you when I get home.

 

I just realized that I forgot to post pictures of the intercooler support brackets from my last post. Here they are.

I got some 1 1/4" OD square tube and cut it to mate together. The cut wasn't dead-on 45° because these aren't mating to a perfectly flat surface. Getting the measurements down was kind of a pain.



Welded



Joined with their 3/16" mounting plates.



Then I capped the ends with some 16ga to keep the moisture out.



The fit is snug with the rubber isolators, but that's exactly what it needed to be.





Then I powder coated them as you saw in my last post. Now I just need to finish the top mounts for the intercooler. Those should be fairly straight forward.

 

Here ya go.

Overall Width (core plus end tanks) = 30.50"


Core Width = 26.00"


Overall height (tanks) = 21.25"


Width including upper mounts = 36.75"


Thickness = 3.00"


Let me know if there are other measurements you need.

 

Awesome build. definitely on my wish list. might be stealing some ideas in a few years.

 

Thank you sir! Will do.

 

Registered for this site just so I could subscribe to this thread.
Also to tell you that you're neat...

 

I know guys, been a loooong time, sorry. I decided to somewhat remodel my garage right in the middle of my build. Mostly back on track now, I took my newly modified core support to the blasters last week. Here it is all cleaned up and in epoxy. All that work is starting to look good.


Now a little filler work to smooth out all the patch panels. I sanded it down with 150 and had a few breakthroughs, but I knew I was going to re-coat the epoxy.




Hanging in the booth. I decided to do the dash at this point too so that I can start getting all the interior put back together.


After recoating everything in epoxy, I sprayed it out with a high-build 2K primer for blocking. Only took two rounds of block sanding in three stages. 320, 400, and finally 600 grit since I'm shooting metallic.


Here they are in color and clear. I found there is no way to get a camera to do this color justice. It's frikkin gorgeous. I'll try to get a better picture in daylight when I bring them home tomorrow.




I decided to do the core support body color instead of plain ol' black. Even though black is how it used to always be done, this gives the truck a little bit of a custom feel with a modern touch which is what I'm going for with this truck.

 

That's cool from under the hood; just be aware that it'll be visible through the grille: while the black blends in with the radiator and looks like one big opening, body color will show through pretty obviously and change the look from the front of the truck. If that's the look you're going for, that's cool - just don't want you to be surprised if you hadn't thought of it.

 

I did think of it. Good call though, thanks. I dig your attention to detail. I don't think it will be a concern though because my intercooler will cover most of the space behind the grill anyway. Plus it's grey, so anything that does show wouldn't be as glaring as if it were red or yellow or something. I agree, that would look awful.

 

Absolutely gorgeous! I had hoped to do some body work on my truck but alas, I have run out of time. Keep up the outstanding work and pics

 

Thanks! Time is definitely a factor.

As promised here is a (slightly) better picture of the paint. It's funny, in the photo it looks like there is some fisheye or solvent pop in a circular pattern, but it's just the reflection of the light fixture in my living room.