The radiator installation went just fine. It is only about 1.75" wider and that width all goes to the passenger side, so the oil cooler fits just fine. The only difficulty I had on this job was that I decided to do the alternator and power steering belts while I had the radiator and shroud out of the way and I have to say, I have worked on a LOT of cars but I have never had the sort of difficulty with brackets and idiotic adjustment mechanisms that I had today. I kind of get why MB provides these screw adjustment mechanisms, but they should have just kept it simple. They are totally unnecessary and just one more expensive thing to break, but I digress.

Because I didn't have a wrench the right size for the oil cooler lines and which would fit down there where they are, I opted to leave the oil cooler in the car. That gave me the predictable difficulty of dealing with the lower bracket in the car and it's another one of MB's needlessly complicated little contraptions. Anyway, it all went back together, I filled the system and started the car, warmed it up and there doesn't appear to be any issues.

I haven't yet dealt with the proper mounting of the reserve tank. I made several brackets this weekend with the kind of metal I was able to get from the hardware store, but I wasn't happy with any of them. I think I'm going to go see a friend who's a metal fab guy and see if he can weld in some decent hardware. Does anyone know of any reason I shouldn't weld on this car? I don't know if the CC computer is still good, because I've never really spent the time figuring out why the cruise doesn't work. I suppose it may make sense to remove that bit from the car before welding, but I can't think of any other computers on board.

For the moment the reserve tank is precariously located with bailing wire, as I couldn't find any of my large zip ties. :-(