Quote Originally Posted by TomJ View Post
I ended up not needing the fan spacer. The radiator I used is an aluminum 2 row designed for a chopped 32. $170 on ebay. I mounted digital guages, speedometer and tach in the space between the top of the radiator and the grill shell. The fan is a 16 inch flex fan and I made a shroud from sheet metal although I don't think I need it. I use a 75/25 water to antifreeze. The truck runs very cool even in 110 degree temps. The guage will go up to 220 sitting ideling for awhile. I discarded the t-stat as it didn't seem to do anything. Everything is working great now. Fingers crossed.
Hey Tom,
Glad you got it done. You may be fine without the t-stat, but when I moved from the midwest (no t-stat) to the gulf coast (Corpus) years back my old Chevy started running hot. An old mechanic down there told me I needed to either put in a t-stat or a flow restrictor (big washer) to slow down the flow and give the system time to lose heat to the air. With no restriction the water pump runs out on it's curve to or near maximum flow, and that may well be too fast for the radiator to dissipate heat - it goes in hot, screams through and leaves hot, and gets hotter on the next trip. Time will tell, but keep it in mind for the future if you start having problems in the summer heat.