ECP radiator issues.

Glad this came up, I'm going to buy an ECP radiator. They look fine for the price. Drilling a few holes in a mounting bracket is no big deal. Did you buy the 22" or 26"? I've done a lot of research on this recently (this weekend, today) and theirs looks pretty darn good. I like how the info on the webpage is written, they seem more honest than your average part description blurb.

But, the main reason I am getting one from them is because I'm throwing in the towel on my ridiculously expensive Griffin 'Direct Fit" radiator. Direct fit? My ***. You think the ECP rad. is not what it should be? Be thankful you didn't get the one I got. I've wanted to smash my radiator into bits the minute I took it out of the box. It's pathetic how many hours I've spent trying to make it work for my application which is just a small block in an A body. The radiator itself is fine and works well but the fit is nowhere near correct.

When I bought it a few years ago, I had to mangle a nice, original shroud to get it to work with my fan set up. While wrangling it around, lots of fins got mashed, I was pissed.

Besides the oversize tank and core, their 'factory blueprinted' radiator came with huge, welded on mounting brackets that put the radiator 1/2" farther back into the engine bay than the stock piece. For whatever reason, it was OK with the previous motor but I recently built a new combo and put in new motor mounts. Guess what? The fan no longer cleared. And it's not like there is only a 1/4" clearance or even an 1/8", there is 0" clearance. I could not physically get the fan on the water pump, even with the short Jag fan clutch. WTF?

I called Griffin about it at one point and they said they used factory blueprints. Let me say here that there is no possible way they used factory blueprints. Maybe they found some random, Brand X drawings but they certainly bore no resemblance to anything Chrysler. I talked it over with the tech and he said it was too late to send it back so my only option was to cut or modify the brackets to make it work. He actually told me that Mopar guys seem to have more problems than anyone else. Wonder why? I was not happy.

So I cut their crazy brackets off and had some generic ones welded on and gained some clearance back but it was still not great and it left no provision for mounting the shroud. All told, I ruined a good shroud, damaged a brand new radiator, modified it to work and it still required more to make it right and I can't even mount the shroud. I've spent too many hours trying to come up with reasonable brackets to hold the thing in place. It's preventing me from finishing my build up and I am not willing to dick around with it anymore. It shouldn't be that difficult. Goodbye Griffin Direct Fit radiator. Let's hope the ECP will be less of a hassle.

BTW, the overflow tank nipple goes to the driver's side on mine as well so don't think it's just ECP, Griffin did it too. I didn't care but just pointing it out.

Sorry for the sort of hijack but the ECP rad. has to be a better product just by default.