my fish is wet :(

Spent yesterday afternoon tuning up my '66 barracuda and dressing up under the hood. Got the restoration battery with green caps from Mancini's, sure looks better than the old nasty dirty one I had in there. Since I was having cooling issues I went with a new high flow 160* T-stat. Happy to say my overheating issues are solved! Went all out with the restoration hose clamps, you know, those metal rings that you should use a special clamp on but when you use vice-grips they slip off and smack your fingernail, yeah those ones ;)

Drove around town last night to some car shows on Gratiot and she's running great, no overheating, I'm happy.

Had a little tiny coolant leak from the t-stat housing, it was a crappy chrome one so I picked up a new alum one from Napa. After driving around all last night and ignoring the faint smell of coolant I thought was just the t-stat housing, I got home and realized my passenger side carpet was SOAKED! I was pretty bummed out, threw a bunch of paper towels down and came back this morning. Hoping to god my heater core didnt start leaking . . .

Came back this morning and went through 3 rolls of paper towel soaking up all that water, it even made its way back to the back seat and was running out the body drain plugs :( After a little snooping around the leak was from the heater core hoses, those stupid "restoration" hose clamps are junk! It was leaking out the hose and ran right down the inner firewall into the car. After swapping out the t-stat housing with the new one I put some worm gear clamps back on the hoses. I filled her up, took 2 gal of water . . . or 3 rolls of paper towels worth for you metric guys ;)

Thankfully it seems to be holding tight now. I was really worried there was a leak in the core but I think it was just that hose from the stupid metal clamp. Really weird how it just ran down inside the firewall. Going to grab some basement dry cans from the hardware store to stick in there for a couple days and dry her out really good. Man, there's never a dull moment with these old cars. . . at least I blew away the 5.0 mustang that tried to pick a fight with the old 'cuda on Gratiot ;)