Radiator Shroud

5/1-5/3/07

I found another missing part for my car but as usual nothing is simple. The car has these aftermarket horns installed. Whoever put them in rigged up this mounting scheme. The factory horns were mounted to the empty holes on either side of the current mounting bracket. These factory horns were covered by a sheet metal shroud intended to force the air coming though the grill though the radiator. That probably got trashed. But everything shows up on e-Bay eventually...

The e-Bay part was pretty nice so I wire-brushed it, primed it, and painted it. But of course the horns are still in the way. So I found a chuck of steel bar stock in my garage and started measuring

Here is the existing mounting bracket for the horn. This was sawed off at some point but there is plenty left. My plan was to make an angled extension to push the horns down deeper into the grille so the shroud would clear them.

Like this. I used 3/16" bar stock both because I had a chunk almost exactly the right length and it is both plenty strong and thick enough to tap the holes. You can see one of the taps in the picture above. My drill press made doing the holes very easy.

Here is one of my test fittings. The horns are very long. It turns out I needed to get the angle just right to get the horns to clear. Since bending this thing is about all my vice could handle this process was not exactly fun.

Too low (hitting the body)

Too high (hitting the grill)

Just right!

Painted the bracket and installed it. I also relocated the horn relay so it would clear the shroud as well.

The last step was finding some sheet metal screws to fit. I have a bucket of screws and just to be extra anal I went though all of them until I found four the right size with slotted heads. After all the car pre-dates Phillips screws. I told you it was anal.