How-To Grilled To Perfection

Modifying the grille shell, fitting head and taillights

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We’re starting to get down to the last of the major details on the Model A bucket re-creation. The only major components still to be dealt with include head and taillights, roll bar, fuel tank, battery and radiator/grille. Then it will be the last of the internal items like seat, seat belts, floor and gauges. This issue we deal with the radiator and grille and then go on to mount the head and taillights.

Having a small block Chevy engine in place means I need to allow for as much cooling as possible in the radiator area, so I called up Norm at Aussie Desert Cooler to discuss the options. Since the body of the Model A is channelled the depth of the chassis (four inches), the overall height of the radiator needed to come down by the same amount. It’s not simply a matter of shortening the radiator by that amount and doing that would limit it’s capacity to cool the engine, so I elected to mount the radiator level with the bottom edge of the chassis rails at the front instead of at the top as they were originally. Because the chassis rails taper toward the front, that doesn’t give me the required four inches difference to match the channelled body, so I opted to have the radiator made 1-1/2 inches shorter to make up (or should that be take away) the difference. The overall theme of the bucket is a late sixties style rod, so I didn’t want a modern aluminium radiator for it, rather an original style brass version painted black. Norm was straight onto the job and the result was a slightly shorter Model A radiator ready to set up in the car.