Radiator blues

[Anthony Louis Pawley]

Hi gang, hope everyone had a nice weekend.

Well I learned a valuable lesson last weekend, so this one with the terrific
weather was
spent fixing the 'Bird...

I drove down to Vancouver/Portland area to watch some trains, and things only
went
downhill from there.

First, I lost all my keys except for the ignition. Fortunately, I had enough
diesel in the
tank to get from Seattle to Portland and back no problem.

Waking up Sundasy morning at the Vancouver Amwreck station, I fired the 'Bird up
and
let her warm her bones, ehh excuse me, I mean frame rails.

Driving down the street, I noticed that turning was god awful hard, in fact I
now had
manual steering, or so it seemed.

After getting my normal daily liquid drug intake of Starbuckles caffeine, I got
back in the
'Bird to head home, and the steeering still felt as if I needed George Forman to
help me
turn the wheel.

Freaking out, I slowly drove around Vancouvers Sunday morning traffic dead
streets, and
after awhile once the drugs(i.e. caffeine) kicked in, I realized that it wasn't
my power
steering pump that was the issue, but my leaky radiator.

The rad. had leaked all over the pulleys on the engine, and the power steering
pump wasn't
able to do anything until it had warmed up enough so ther belt would grab.

Safely making it back to Ballard, I parked the 'Bird and red tagged her, no
trips until further
notice.

So, on Saturda morning I began the tear down. Three hours later I had the leaky
culprit
out, and I can say that I have learnedv a fair bit about the front end of my
FC33.

Has anyone had their radiator out of a FC expanded by adding another cooling
pass
without changing the physical dimensions?

Anybody ever used large quick disconnects in the middle of there hose lines to
the engine
block and chassis heater? I want to do this so that I can easily remove the rad.
in the future
easy accessiblity for tune ups, etc. without having to make new gaskets every
time and break
the hose fittings off of the rad.

I like the fact that it swings out. The engineering on this Seventies beheamoth
is truly
remarkable. Built BlueBird Tough, forget about Fords!

Well, back to work on marine diesels, I wish instead I was workin' on the
'Bird, but
gotta pay the bills!

Sincerely, Tony
Pawley

Ballard, Wash.
1979
FC33 with 3208T



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