[Vic1947]

Once the sides were bent, I slid the assembly into place to mark the upper and lower bend locations. Much to my surprise, the fan was too tight to fit the opening. I'd never measured it, but when I did, I found that the guys had cut the line on the drawing that represented the fan circle and not the line for the opening. So I was looking at an 18" opening and an 18" fan. At this point I was heavily invested in the shroud and didn't want to start over. The easiest solution was to go online and order a 17" fan from Speedway. It arrived the next day and was just what I needed. A few tweaks to the sides and it lined right up. After bending the top and bottom, I used rivet nuts to attach it. Foam weatherstrip on the sides help to seal it up and it has about a 1/2" gap around the fan blades. That calculates out to right at 3% of the blade diameter which is the recommended amount.

While I was at it, I replaced the 180 thermostat with a 160 and put in 2.5 gallons of distilled water with a bottle of water wetter. This afternoon, I went to fill up with gas and I think I can live with the results. The temp stayed around 165 while driving and got as high as 185 while idling. The pusher fans kicked in and it didn't seem to want to climb any higher. At least now, on the road it cools back down and the fans can turn off. Before, once they were on, they'd never get down to the shutoff temp.

I hope this is the end of the cooling issues. I may take a few degrees of timing out of it for some added insurance, but other than that, I'm out of bullets.