Does the inline 6 motors on these ford trucks were the radiator smaller then the V8s? Especially the radiator opening on the core support was it the same size or smaller mine is 25inch radiator open and I bought a 1977 Ford F-250 radiator for my 351 and its acting like it’s the wrong one

 

The radiators don't interchange because of the top outlet. What issues do you have?

 

Alright the top two pictures are passenger side of the radiator and it’s up against that bottom piece and is in the factory mounts but on the driver side is we’re the issue is the radiator is like 2-3 inch longer then the opening and that’s pictured in the last photo so I’m guessing just cutting the radiator opening wider to fit the radiator

 

My 78 302 radiator support was a narrow opening, when I put a larger radiator from a 390 truck I had to cut the opening to match and drill holes for the clips.

 

That was my first plan is to just cut it but I wanted to ask before I started cutting 😂 thank you for your response

 

The radiator supports can be interchanged if you know were to find one as I used one off a f150 on my f100 as I had bought an original style heavy duty cooling radiator for my 302 f100 no AC and could see the difference on supports as I had both on hand ,, and the f150 which had the 351 m had the bigger radiator and it was an AC truck so it had the larger radiator ,,my f100 had a 302 an used the smaller support from factory ,,you can enlarge your old one , seem to think the bolt holes for larger size was there or places for them were there but opening was smaller on the f100 so I swapped

 

I had to cut the core support on my 74 with 302 auto no ac to agree with the champian radiator I put in. Figure out the width you want, you will probably see that the face of the support is stamped with the stiffening ribs to accommodate all radiator widths and they punched it for the size that was getting built.

One suggestion I can give is when you figure out the width, cut the corners with a hole saw, then cut the two horizontal cuts and one vertical cut with a sawzall, jigsaw, tool of your choosing. Then your opening will have the radiused corners all the way around. Get a hole saw with a diameter that is comparable to the corners that exist.

I had the grill out to do mine. Added a very securely mounted secondary trans cooler and then flat black painted everything. Turned out nice to me.