Chevrolet C8 1940 Cab 11 restoration, The Netherlands

[Alex van de Wetering]

Sadly, I won't make my D-day 2019 deadline....not by a long shot actually as progress over the past 1,5 year has been very, very slow.

Anyway, I haven't updated the thread for a long time, so I have to catch up.

My C8 rad had a few rows soldered shut and the sheet metal was pretty rusty. I brought the rad to a specialist who recored it and pressure tested it. Sadly, they just cleaned the rusty sheet metal and gave it a coat of water-based black paint. The filler neck was still not usable and after a few months the sheet metal started to rust again.....and that was with the rad stored dry indoors in the garage.
It seems the black paint they use for modern rads is just not good enough to keep WW2 steel from rusting...or maybe they just didn't remove the acid from soldering.

I had them remove the sheet metal again and fixed the metal properly.

[Alex van de Wetering]

"Cleaning" the sheet metal, meant they had blasted the rusted metal and than solder it back on the rad without welding on any fresh metal. But, they did make a new lower sheet metal section, so I only had to fix the sides.

Fixing the sheet metal sides was easy enough with some sheet.

Alex

[Alex van de Wetering]

Now for the filler neck....the filler cap had nothing to clamp onto....and the lower half of the filler neck was rusted through (they had just soldered a brass plate on top of the hole). In the end I used a cap for a garden fence post as a base for the rounded end of the filler neck. The ring where the filler cap catches onto came from a CCKW part....I think it's a 352 fuel filler neck. Brian Asbury supplied a NOS GM rad cap.

After some welding and soldering, I pressure tested the filler neck with some hose and caps from the hardware store and a bicycle tyre pump.

[Alex van de Wetering]

The brass chain for the cap came from some spare rad parts I bought in France some time ago.

After the rad shop had re-soldered the sides.....I cleand all remaining rust spost and cleaned the soldering spots with baking soda and water. A good few coats of rust primer and satin black paint will hopefully mean the rad is now ready.

Alex

[Bob Carriere]

.....nothing like doing it yourself...... but doing the whole tank soldering does require skills ans special tools.

Sorry to see you miss the 75th .......

[Mike K]

Very clever work Alex My C8 original radiator is stuffed also .