My 2000 SS sprung a leak. If my radiator cant be fixed and I need a new one, are there any thinner ones so I dont have to worry about it bumping the headers, or mabye a higher performance radiator for this car. Im just looking for ideas.

 

No need for a higher performance radiator, just get an OEM replacement. Also- what do you mean by 'bumping the headers'? Are you talking about during install- because the fans should still be between the radiator and headers during operation.

 

No the headers are actually almost touching the fan motor. I have heat wrap on it, and the wrap touches the fan motor when the engine moves around.

 

do you have shorter dog bones you may have to put back the original length dogbones do to the clearence issues.imo i dont think it is good for the engine if the headers are that close to the engine. because the radiator wont have a chance to cool the coolent and trans fluid as well as it should. it would be putting it in a heat bind if there is high heat that close to the radiator imo.

 

I have regular dogbones.

 

The bad thing is, no radiator is going to be significantly more skinny than what you already have. A lot of people have headers in 6th gen montes- I haven't heard any issues. What headers are they? The only thing I could think of is to do poly mounts to keep it from directly touching. Do your fans have factory heat shields like some wbodys do?

 

I know the radiator on the police package impalas (3.8l) is beefed up but I really doubt it would fit in our engine compartment.

 

You can find bigger, but I wouldn't look for smaller.

Stick with what you have.

 

Mine has a metal heat shield on the back of the fan motor. One of the header primaries (tog's) is pretty close to it yet I still have enough room there to rock the engine forward when i need to.

Is it possible that one of your lower motor mounts is bad, causing the engine to lean forward a bit too much somehow?

If the lower mounts are good, then I'd second the suggestion for poly mounts (or flipping your stock upper mounts if you haven't already).

-Riggs.

 

My stock mounts are flipped and the heat shields were removed to allow the headers to fit. And Im just putting back in a stock one. They are SSAC headers