Falcon Progress

I got the Falcon back together and put some miles on it. The lower ball joints are toast (original?) so the front end wanders a bunch. But it looks like I might have a handle on the overheating thing. The radiator has been replaced with a custom made 4 row high efficency brass and copper unit, and it also has the lower outlet on the correct side.

The temp gauge was reading high but I figured out it was in the wrong place to read correct,y. It was mounted in the intake manifold and when I compared the temperature on the gauge with the temp from the actual hose (using a cool infrared laser temp gun) I saw a big difference. I found a thermostat housing with a mounting for the temperature gauge probe so I swapped that out, and I also flushed the hell out of the block and radiator as the coolant was very rusty. Now it seem to be under control but there's new problems!

Let's just take a moment to enjoy the success we did have.

This is the old and new radiator side by side. Notice the lower outlet is on the opposite side on the new radiator.

Here's another view, note here how the mounting bracket on the new radiator is leaned back so the thicker core can fit through the core support. The core itself is a lot thicker and the tanks are much bigger as well.

This is what it all looks like mounted up. The fan is actually bigger than the core so I really need to make some kind of a guard on top to protect wayward fingers.

We also had an issue with the gauge reading correctly. When the gauge was reading 210...

The water in the top hose was actually at 167. There was no consistent error, it was just reading hot at indicated temps over 160 (when the thermostat opens).

I found a therostat housing that mounted the temp gauge probe right in it, closer to the water itels and away from the heat of the block.

Now when it reads 190...

It's still reading hot but a lot closer to the truth!