So I managed to break a seal on my radiator while going to buy a lottery ticket, guess you can say I won big in the worst way 🤔. Took a couple of days to realize there was an issue, but the first indication was hitting about 240 degrees with a 180 stat. Anyway, after searching and weighing my options I decided to go with Cold Case even though I did read there could be some slight fitment issues, but it was cheaper than most of the options but most importantly, not on backorder. I order the radiator from Jeg's as I could use a $50 coupon (I'm always looking for the deal) and proceeded to watch tons of install videos to be ready to install it that weekend. The Radiator comes in Saturday, nicely packaged and visually looked good, so figured everything would just work, but not so fast, obviously things were too good to be true. Once I got the old radiator off, I proceeded to fit the fan on the new one to check fitment, once in place, the gaps on either side of the fan seemed to be off, by that I mean out of square. The fan did however fall directly on the supports and with a bit of prying to the tabs, lined up to the bolt holes almost correctly (had to cut a bit of the fan plastic to bolt it to the radiator). I figured it was just a bit off, but surely, they accounted for it in the rest of the build, yeah, no. I struggled for a while trying to get everything mated up, but the holes were nowhere near the proper location, so I call Jegs to get it sorted out. Understandably, Jegs CS does not work on Sunday, but I was able to contact someone in sales who got another ordered for me and informed me that I needed to call CS on Monday for a refund. I call CS on Monday morning, was hold for about 1.5hrs then had to hang up due to a meeting, called before lunch and was on hold for about 2.5hrs before my call "drops", call again at about 3:45pm and proceed to hold until about 7:30pm. This is an insane wait time, but to the Jegs CS reps credit, she was very helpful, emailed me everything I needed and even credited me $50 plus tax on the replacement radiator that the salesperson did not apply. The new radiator arrives in time for the weekend, and I immediately try fitting the fan, to my pleasant surprise, the gaps are now pretty even, looks good so far. As I'm installing, I'm getting excited as the driver's side bolts go in with no issue, then I move to the passenger side. The lower bolt hole is very close, the top one not so much, normally I would consider this unacceptable, but my wife doesn't want me driving her truck anymore, and I really want my car back so I make a decision, if I can get three bolts in and it feels solid, I'm calling it good. Luckily there was enough play between the parts that I was able to get the lower holes to line up with the use of a small clamp, crisis averted right? Not so fast, as I'm installing the lower support, I jump out to check that everything is lining up correctly, turns out they welded the tabs to the upper isolators too far back 🤬. As I'm looking down at this radiator, I'm wondering was the example radiator from a wrecked car? Who knows, but what's really got me irked is that the internet has the gall to call this "slight fitment issues" considering that, to me, the proper way fix said fitment issues would be to cut and weld. Anyway, at some point I realized that the isolators are a bit longer towards the front of the car, and I said to myself, "self, maybe if you trim the lip back a bit and install them backwards it will fit?" Baby Jesus must have taken pity on me because it worked perfectly, so I was able to finish putting everything together that evening and put fluids in the next day. This is only the second day actually running this radiator, so far so good, but I write all this to have a record on the internet for others looking to purchase one of these radiators saying, "if you decide to buy a Cold Case radiator EXPECT FITMENT ISSUES, EXPECT DELAYS DUE TO RETURNS OR MODIFCATONS NEEDED". Hindsight being 20/20, had I purchased a Mishimoto (insert brand here, that was just my other choice), I would have had my car on the road faster, even with backorder delays, and would have probably had less headaches during install, the extra money would have been welll worth it to me.
Rant over...
Rant over...
