Just need to vent, I bought what appeared to be a very welldone and nice 69 442 in early Oct. 2012 from a reputable dealer, in early Oct.it was cold and rainy unable to test drive or run for any amount of time………. Ibought it, my bad. Had it delivered a week later to my home a 100 miles southweather was better sunny and cool took it for a ride and after 30 min temp hadclimbed to 220 degrees and detonation started to set in. long story short spentthe next month replacing fan clutch, under bumper shrouding this and that andimproved it slightly but by now it was time to put it in storage and work on mygarage so I would have a place to work on it in the future. I pulled it out about a month ago checked thermostatfound there was not one, put in Robert Shaw 160 degree unit checked timing,total timing and fuel mixture all seemed to be good. After looking closernoticed clutch on fan was still not locking up properly had bought cheapadvanced auto zone orilely unit so I replaced again with a BB truck unit madein the USA clutch still not engaging. Figured it’s not drawing enough airthrough radiator to heat it up, I have a puller electric fan wired direct toignition and thought maybe I should have a pusher maybe the 2 fans fightingeach other. I pull the rad order a TCI16” pusher and while waiting for it to be delivered figure I’ll clean the finsin the rad although it looks like new. Fins look good on exterior but I try toshine a light through and all the interior fins are mangled and crumpled, thisaluminum rad is a complete piece of chinese made junk, ordered a new $600.00 BeCool unit should be here early this week. I guess I can’t make story short. Iam just frustrated by all the junk coming to our shores while there are so manygood people here out of work. I have a large piece of aluminum scrape I don’teven want to turn in because they will just send it back to china to createanother piece junk out of. It is getting to the point where it is impossible toby quality stuff my Levi’s are not what they used to be, the list is endless.Sorry just tired of this s**t.

 

I used a cheap china dist. hei that i bought for 50 bucks and it works great. i also bought aluminum pulleys dirt cheap china made and they are good too. I have also had a great run with autozone parts. I feel for you trust me when i get burned on parts which i have i hate it . But usually when i buy ebay or autozone i try to reaserch the part numbers to see what other peoples experiences are.

 

I feel your pain. However, I am running an aluminum radiator from "Canada" (made in china off ebay) with my 455 and it stays 180 all day no matter the outside temp. I guess it's hit and miss on alot of these parts nowadays. I paid alot extra for my engine build parts made in USA.
Edit- I think the radiator without looking it up was only about $225.00 4 years ago.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience jlw442.

With all the information available at our fingertips these days, the best thing I can do is research every part I buy as best I can. I put a lot of value into those customer reviews that are available on most sites, because it's first hand experience.

It's also been my experience that I either pay up front for a reliable part, or pay on the tail-end by replacing a sh*tty part.

 

I think you should systematically eliminate problems rather than replacing everything. Like ziff396, I'm running a cheap, single core, aluminum radiator and my 455 doesn't ever get over 190. I think I paid less than $200 4 or 5 years ago. I see in your post you replaced the under bumber shrouding, do you have the fan shroud in place? Missing the shroud seems to be the single biggest reason the BBO's overheat.

 

yes fan shroud is in place, found many gap around edges and at top corners where the universal fit rad did not seal properly fabricated rubber and metal seals for these areas found it was missing under bumper shroud was missing by going through assembly manual. I bought the car with this piece of junk in it