I was hoping that all I'd have to do with the radiator on my old 53 F-100 was clean it up and squirt some fresh paint black paint on it. But, there's a little work to do first. While the core and top and bottom reservoirs are in okay shape, there are steel sheet metal "frames" soldered to the reservoirs which are the metal pieces that are used for mounting the radiator to the truck and bolting the fan shroud to. One of these metal farmes has come unsoldered to the bottom reservoir. I've never soldered mild steel before. I'm assuming that I have to sandblast the steel to get it spotless at the point where the solder connection is made. But is there a trick to this? Should the steel be "tinned" first? What kind of solder should be used? Is it a starightforward task, or is there a mystery to the process that passed away with all the radiator repair shops of yesteryear? Lastly, I remember reading in the paint and body work forum here about sheetmetal adhesives. If anyone has experience with these adhesives, my question is: would that work in this radiator repair application? Thanks.

 

I had stock rad from 48 F3 to put inn my 50 F1, the only parts worth using were the support brackets and shroud.

I had a rad shop rebuild /recore it for a reasonable price, you might consider having local rad shop solder on the brackets. Shouldn't be tooo costly, and you could concentrate on the "bigger picture".

Tom

 

What Tip49 suggested is a good idea, and he's right, it'll be pretty cheap. It might not hurt if the radiator shop did checked it out while they have it, just to be sure. I ended up having to replace mine, but it was in pretty bad shape. I got one of those high-performance radiators, because, well, I had the money at the time.

 

The tanks and core are in excellent condition. I had the whole thing rebuilt about 40,000 miles ago. There weren't even any bugs stuck in it. The metal bracket has come undone and must be resoldered. I was thinking that I could do it myself, if I had more information about how to do it.

 

I figured that I'd finish this thread, since I started it. I cleaned the metal at both the bottom reservoir tank and the steel frame with a wire wheel on a drill. There was a lot of solder on the tank where the connection had been made. I joined the two parts together and applied heat from a propane torch and made a fast connection. The solder that the radiator shop had used when I last had it repaired many, many years ago has an extremely low melting temperature, and the solder flowed like water after a few seconds of applying the torch. So, the fix has been made. For what it's worth, I guess that the radiator shop had applied a black paint to the radiator after they recored it. I brushed on some mineral spirit solvent to remove any stray grease or WD-40 prior to me putting fresh paint on it, and black paint that was still remaining disolved as soon as the mineral spirits hit it. My guess is that the radiator shop just used a cheap thin paint to make the whole thing look a little better after they recored it. So, that's it for this thread. For what it's worth, the radiator shop that recored my radiator, did so back in 1975. The shop is long gone. It was in Santa Cruz, California. The old guys who ran it had been there in an ancient old garage since the forties. The old building has been demo'd and replaced with a low rise office that probably does business with the yuppie scum that ruined the town. It's unlikey that a shop like that will ever exist again. It's probably been determined that they are an envornmental threat. The necessary liquids used to clean 'em up are probably banned. And anyway, nowadays, the resrvoirs are made out of plastic. Nobody repairs radiators anymore. Nobody fixes anything anymore except the kind of people who haunt these forums

 

That's what I like about this forum; I'm hanging with people with the same ideals as me. Rejuvenate the classic Ford.

You also run across craftsmen that like to put in the extra effort. Case in point, my rad rebuild cost me less than market value. the guy got little for his labour, just wanted to contribute to my project.'s completion.

Tom

 

Radiator shops used a dilluted paint on radiators so the paint would not hinder heat dissapation. If you use a regular paint you will infact be insulating the radiator with the layer of paint.

Terry