All aluminum radiator?

Thunderbird/Cougars & Mark VIII's use the same radiator. A popular swap (which I have done to my Thunderbird) is to put in a 2003 Cobra radiator. It's all aluminum, has no provisions for transmission lines (meaning you HAVE to use an external cooler), and is slightly taller. To mount it in the Thunderbird, you have to flip the top mounts over and swap sides - that's it. All aluminum construction and superior cooling. Here is a pic of the installation in my Thunderbird (sorry for the crappy phone pic):

CobraRadiator.jpg
 
The '03-04 Cobra radiator is a great choice for these cars.

rad1.jpg


For some reason, flipping the mounts side to side didn't work in my XR7. I remember having to cut/bend/weld both of them to get the fit perfect. Either way, it didn't take much effort:
radbracket1.jpg


I clearanced the K-member a bit at the lower radiator hose location. This is the best pic I have of that at the moment. You can see where I removed material at the top-right of the pic:
swaybarrings.jpg


The radiator is a bit thicker than the stocker:
radmeasurement.jpg


I chose to run the '03-04 Cobra fan:
fan.jpg

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And I dressed the top of the radiator up by making a cover for it:
radiatorcover1.jpg
 
chris2523 said:
the stock cooler looks like a joke anyway.
no harm done ditching it and going to a large standalone cooler.
Click to expand...

:I If you've ever opened up a stock radiator and taken a look at it, it certainly does look like a joke. I wouldn't even call it a "cooler", rather a "heat exchanger". The stock setup also runs the risk of contaminating the transmission fluid with coolant if/when the heat exchanger springs a leak. The only benefit to running it inline with a aftermarket cooler is that you'll get the fluid up to temp quickly. However, if you're running any kind of stall, getting the fluid up to temp isn't much of an issue, especially if you use a plate-type cooler with a thermal bypass.

OP, I've seen some knockoff Cobra radiators on eBay that had a stock-type trans fluid heat exchanger built into them. No word on the quality of those, though.
 
What is a plate style w/ thermal bypass? And I don't have a stall yet but will have a 3500 soon
 
I mounted my tranny cooler directly to the front of the radiator. The a/c condenser is in front of that, so you can't see the tranny cooler even if you wanted to. If I ever had to service it, I simply remove the two bolts holding the mounts on the top of the radiator, lean it back, and voila, there is the cooler.

There is a super large 45,000 btu cooler available that some people like to mount at the bottom facing the ground - that's a cool option too.
 
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Yep it's a good one, I have it installed on my 32v bird. Cheapest I've found it is through bulkpart.com
 
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