Posted by Larry On Hood Canal on Monday, November 21, 2005 at 9:26AM :
After digging through the archives here & weighing all the options, which were few, I sprung for the $375 and had the radiator in my 67 W200, which developed a hole, recored. $375 was right in line with what others here have said the job costs. For posterity, some lessons I learned;
Watch for the radiator repair guy who puts your old one on the 'tester', flips it on, and when fluid gushes out the top says "Yep Sonny, she's plugged alrighty." Like Elmer Fudd says, "Sayyyy..There's somethin' pwetty' scwewwy' goin' awound' heah'!" A 'one size fits all' flow tester? A Toyota radiator will flow the same as a Peterbilts? When I sighted down through old core, it was clean as could be.
There's quite an art to doing this job. Make sure you find someone who knows their business.
As pulled, a radiator from a Dodge V8 truck won't fit in a slant 6 truck, the radiator hits the fan. The flanges for the 6 truck put the core further forward to compensate for the longer engine length of the 6. It would probably work the other way around, but you'd have to put a spacer on the 8's fan.
The earliest new radiators available from the parts houses are early to mid 70's. I would've liked to look at one from a mid 70's slant 6 truck, but never got the chance.
Make sure you get the right cap for the right radiator. If you put a 15 pound cap on a 7 pound radiator, like mine, you'll blow it out for sure.
The first one lasted almost 40 years. If this one lasts anywhere near that long, I'll be 86 years old, and probably won't care anymore.