Well, it's not like I sat around this weekend, but my radiator deal fell through. The weekend was spent doing web research and trying to make phone calls. It looks like I'm back to Aluminum but I'm not sure I can get enough performance out of it. Right now Griffin is the only company I found to custom make a 1.5" thick core aluminum radiator. the original 560SL radiator is 40mm tubes 10mm on centers. I need to see if Griffin will reduce there tube spacing to 3/8". That would only make the radiator equivelant to the 560SL. The SL600 ~15% larger. Its looking right now that the best alternative may be to cut off the 560SL end tanks and weld on custom tanks. That still leaves me ~ 15% short on cooling over the SL600 radiator.

Maybe if I put Water Wetter in it that will make up 15% (Wishful Thinking).
Lets see what Griffin comes up with before I panic.

For some sense of real progress, I did get the end plates fabricated and welded to the inner portion of the R129 cats. That enables me to replace the twin ovel inlet tubes to the cats with one 2.5" round tube. On this tube I can reposition the O2 bungs so that the cats will fit in the car. I can now start the sizing and welding of the rest of the exhaust at least to the cats. I will have Pypesmith (a division of Timevalve) do all final welding and exhaust past the cats.

John Roncallo

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