'73 Vega GT All Aluminum Wildcat 355 Project

Contents:
Page 1: Engine Block prep
Page 2: Head mods
Page 3: Induction/Exhaust
Page 4: Engine Assembly
Page 5: Front Suspension Mods
Page 6: Rear Suspension/Weight Transfer Mods
Page 7: Rust Repair and Undercarriage prep
Page 8: Frame Rail fabrication/Unibody support
Page 9: Body Mods
Page 10: Transmission Mods
Page 11: T5 Rebuild
Page 12: BMW Radiator Swap

BMW Radiator Swap

I found a BMW radiator from a 5.0L V12 with the help of the H-Body.org list and I've finally had the time to place it in the car. Putting it ahead of the core support was a fantasy. NO WAY! I'm not sure it's even possible to put one up there that will fit. The OVERALL height dimension needs to be around 16". It would probably work better on a later Vega.

The problem is lower valence swoops back and the upper fascia tapers back to meet the hood. That makes it pretty tight. Especially after I discovered that the "Dimensions" of the rad are taken at kinda illogical places.

SO the BMW 5.0l v12 rad that I bought will not work ahead of the core support. Bummer. It will, however fit really nice right where it should go. Here's why:

First off did I say it's GIGANTIC! LOL! That had me worried. Not that worried because it was only $110. The overall dimensions are 18.5x30. WOW! That's way different than the posted dims. The height without the upper and lower horizontal supports IS 17.25" as advertised. I have NO idea where they were getting the 25.5" dimension though. The core is about 26". OK so here's the cool part; Peep these pix. See those thinner parts of the side tanks? That is exactly where the frame rails go:

Here's what it looks like from the engine side. You can see how I had to cut the front rails. I don't think it will cause any structural problems because I fabricated metal supports around where I cut recesses. You can see from this side and the close up that I had to cut the right side pretty drastically. That was to be sure access to the rad output was unrestricted:

Since I'm going with a rack steering system the extra support used for the steering gear and the corresponding steering links were no longer necessary. Here's a couple pix of the driver side. You can see where I cut into the rail right ahead of where the steering gear box used to be. I didn't remove much from here. It was more like reforming it. It is pretty proximal to the left side sway bar link so that was as far as I could go in. The right side had plenty of extra to work with so it turned out pretty good.

Here's what it looks like through the tiny hole where the stock rad used to go. LOL! In the end it actually fits pretty nice. I think it's as much rad as you can get into it. I'm pretty confident that I will not have cooling problems. The next part is to enlarge this hole a little for better air flow and mount a Taurus electric fan for cooling on the engine side.