I also have the bottom fan shroud that Steve mentions. It's a plastic one I ordered from one of the T-Bird suppliers. This is in addition to the CASCO modified water pump & the bypass hose restriction already mentioned. Don't know how much the shroud helped, as I have modified a lot of things to get the Bird to run cool (did the shroud, water pump, & bypass modification at the same time). But I can pull enough air through the radiator, & flow enough coolant apparently to idle as long as I please with no heat issues now. I also followed Steve's timing & manifold vacuum advance suggestions (very interesting reads on both ported & non-ported vacuum advance when searching old posts here). All I know is it runs much cooler, & no longer do I watch the temp gage peg regularly.

Brian - 56 T-Bird

Woodinville WA

HAs anyone put a shroud [or is one available] for the Fairlanes ? I have been thinking about this for mine . Ive done the basic mods and only gets hot sitting in slow traffic on a hot day. Thought a shroud would fix it.



"Came too close to dying to stop living now!"

What specific electric fan are you running on the T-Bird?

I could check this again in my driveway. It was 130 over ambient and rising in my original post.



$50 eBay reversible 16", curved blade. I had to flip the blades and reverse the polarity of the motor. No way this is 3000 cfm, but it does draw some heavy current! About half the price of the equivalent from fanman. We'll see how long it lasts... if it fries, replacement is a simple bolt in (after pulling the grille... ugh)

does anyone make a water pump with a decent modern impeller design for the 312 birds?

mine looks like some metal blocks welded on a disk.

Removing the 1” spacer that's behind the water pump seems to be the easy fix while using a stock unmodified water pump. This simply requires the fan pulley to be spaced back forward to get the fan belt back to its original location.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

Like many others with bird heating issues I have tried most of the fixes. One thing I noticed in the course of all these things with my car was a change in the radiator. My car sat in storage for a long long time and when I first restarted it in 2000 it had the original stock radiator in relatively good condition. The car did not overheat then. However sometime later the rad developed a leak and so I had new copper core put in it. When I got it back there was a baffle in the top header tank missing. Since it was fall and there wasn't a problem. However the next summer the car started overheating. As much as I could see the baffle was a horizontal sheet of brass that covered the core under the filler cap extending left and right out of sight. I think its function was to divide the flow coming from the upper right corner and send part of it over the baffle to the left side of the rad.

If someone still has a stock rad it would be interesting to do a temperature profile from left to right and top to bottom when the engine is hot and idling to see how much temp difference there is from left to right.

Doug T

The Highlands, Louisville, Ky.

Doug, my 1st year at Columbus was 2005. I remember you soldering your radiator that year.

  Dennis in Lititz PA

Talkwrench...On the Fairlanes no fan shroud should be needed if the fan is close (1/2") to the radiator; but I have thought of one for mine, moving the fan back as much as I could.

I have made shrouds for our 1/2 mile dirt Super Stock using a metal circle 3/8" from the fan and half way thru the pitch. I used styrofoam for the pattern with the ring and fiberglassed over it. Other racers who see them say I have too much time on my hands. Other racers make them out of aluminum tapering from the edge of the rad to the fan circle just as my fiberglass ones do. I just can't weld aluminum. A good fabricator can do this with a minumum of welding and making good bends on a box break. If you live close to a good racecar fabricator these guys can do this and probably will like to help.

I have 2 rads for my Fairlane and neither have the tank deflector; something I never thought of....Good Luck

56 Vic, B'Ville 200 MPH Club Member, So Cal.

I'll just keep my eye out for something that may work. Dont think my fan is quite that close to the radiator.. mm have to check? Better make sure the front steady rest is solid too if its going to get that close !



"Came too close to dying to stop living now!"