Hoover bit

David, i personally think trimcoil is too thing...would deform and not do its job well....but we can wait for some final word from Bob Hoover himself....

------------------- Chris Perdue "I'm ever so thankful for the Internet; it has allowed me to keep a finger in the pie and to make some small contribution to those younger who will carry the air-cooled legend forward" Jim Mais Feb. 2004

I made two of them a year ago out of angle aluminum that I got at either home depot or lowes...I wouldn't suggest going 'thin' on this because you're liable to tear it apart via engine vibrations if you make it too cheaply. Personally, I riveted the pieces together with a pop-rivet gun and so far so good.

The only other sticky point for the fabrication is putting the 90 degree bend into the angle aluminum where it wraps around the cooler. Be advised that simply 'bending' the aluminum is a sure way to make it break. I played with using a torch to heat the aluminum, and while that works you must exercise caution. Once you get aluminum to the melting point it just falls in a blob to the floor. It will not change color or give you any other indication that it's about to melt..I found about 5-6 seconds of 'wanding' the aluminum with a propane torch was sufficient to make a clean looking bend.

As far as 'sealing it up' goes, I probably broke the rules but I used the foam tape that you would normally put between a camper shell and the bed of a pickup to wrap over the oil cooler, and I used RTV to fill the gap between the narrow side of the 'hoover bit' and the cooler itself. Once the fan shroud was installed it appeared to be touching the new bracket slightly so I did not do anything to seal up the gap between the fansroud and the left facing side of the cooler(nearest the throttle tube). After the fanshroud was fully seated I center-punched and drilled the hole for the screw that keeps the outer 'flap' up tight against the cooler.

I cannot tell you how effective it was because I don't have an instrumented engine, nor do I have a complete set of flaps or a thermostat. I just wanted to make one because I've had countless people tell me flat out "That piece does not exist". Common sense would dicate that if you have a HUGE FRIGGIN HOLE between the cooler and the fanshroud that -something- was supposed to be there originally to fill the hole.

I think the main reason it's missing from so many cars is that it was probably destroyed when someone who didn't know better tried to lift off the fanshroud BEFORE removing that last screw in the back, and then tore the sealing frame off trying to remove the fanshroud. Even the orange bentley manual gets it wrong as far as that fastener in the back goes, no mention of it in there at all.

As a side note, I visited several junkyards in phoenix looking for this piece. In one case, I found an entire BIN of used coolers..and not a single one had the sealing frame on it.

Chris