Bald Mountain wins (again!) (1 Viewer)

[psreno]

You ever have one of "those" roads.

It's not particularly difficult, although it does take a 4x4 and not a little Ford Escape AWD (Ford claims it has 4WD, but I don't see any xfer case!).

Bald Mountain between Yerington and Hawthorne has been eaten us up this summer. In the last 2-3 months we had a tech eat up all 4 tires and his Ops Manager blew out a tranny on this road.

So this engineer out of Sac needed to get up to the radio towers to run some EM tests and had already tried in his Ford Transit Connect - and got a lot farther up than I would have thought. As a matter of fact, just a little farther than I did in my '68 on Thursday.

Apparently, when I made a fan shroud this summer I cut the tolerances a little close....

 

[WILLD420]

Nice Fail. One of the reasons I got rid of my early Bronco was it's constant overheating, even with new rad/shroud/fan etc. I tried mounting up all sorts of different junkyard rads before I finally gave up and spent the money for the right stuff. One of them was a 6 core model for a big-block CJ. That rad taught me that a fan can grow forward at least 2" at 5K rpm. I also learned over the years that banging around off-road your engine can walk from one side of the compartment to the other and back again...

Looking back, I should have kept the 6 core rad and bought a big electric fan for it. I'd probably still own the rig...

 

[DesertLake]

We used to "happyface" radiators regularly when we had a long extension on the fan. That's why I built the long fiberglass shroud, to get rid of the extension that caused the SBC water pump to come apart every 10000 miles or so...

 

[locrwln1]

Ouch. I had a buddy that tried two times to run Rubicon in an old CJ7 and both times, as Will talked about between engine movement, frame flex and who know what else, he did the same thing to his radiator.

Jack

 

[24HOURSOFNEVADA]

kind of off topic, but have you posted any pics of your 45? I used to see it running around every once in awhile, but I haven't seen it lately. I'd really like to see more of it.

 

[psreno]

That's weird, I didn't get any notifications of replies to the thread. Don't you automatically subscribe to a post you initiate?

Anyway, took the radiator to Courtesy Radiator on Wells. They've treated me well before. He was even talking about a new 5 core radiator that he could weld my tanks onto. No word on price yet, I'll post when I know.

I have a spare radiator in case I need one in a hurry. Looks real similar, except that the damaged fins have been brazed shut. Still works fine, just a little diminished capacity. That spare was rendered to me after an incident Chukar hunting outside of Gerlach. That time I broke a sping pin coming out of a dry creek and into a rock I didn't see. Only broke a couple of fins, but I still had to hike back a little more than 10 miles to Empire (with rad.) so I could hitch a ride with one of the tractors hauling sheetrock back to Reno. 1992, what a year...

Now, for some cruiser porn. I will have to find more FJ45 pix, but until then...

 

[rusty_tlc]

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