Radiator (50)

The radiator was gone through and repainted by a radiator shop. To be honest, the result sucked immensely. It looked filthy on the inside, most of the fins in the radiator core were bent/damaged and the bad paint job also had started to flake.

A completely restored radiator

So, I removed all the paint, cleaned and pressure tested it n the same way I did the heat exchangers for the ventilation (see the article Heat exchangers). I spent a couple of hours to straighten out all the bent fins and after that I put a thin layer of Eastwood's Radiator paint, black satin.

The thermostat was treated in the same way.

Some extras

I’m not sure the English wording is correct for these items, extras needed for the cold Nordic climate. Let me know if you have the right terminology, or if you know anything about these items.

Radiator jalousie

Actually, I don’t know if “Radiator jalousie” is a good term for this item but it’s what the 219 spare parts catalogue calls it. “Radiator blind” and "Radiator cover" are other terms that I’ve seen. But I’ll stick to the first for the time being, i.e. until someone corrects me…

This is one variant of the radiator jalousie, there are others. This was probably mounted by the Mercedes-Benz’ dealer in Sweden, Philipson, before delivery of the car to the customer, in this case my father. Could also be that he installed it himself afterwards, I’m not aware of this part of the car’s history. The blind is yet to be mounted to the car.

The radiator jalousie is made of a coated (rubberized?) fabric. The lower end of it is fastened to the horizontal cross tube that supports the radiator frame. At the upper end, on a spring-loaded roller with a bracket, a wire is attached. The wire goes, via a tube soldered on the radiator, along the engine and, via another tube that goes through the partition wall and the firewall, into the passenger compartment. There the wire merges into a chain that can be hooked into a bracket screwed into one of the glove compartment’s walls (the bracket can be seen in the first picture in the gallery below). This allows you to adjust how much of the radiator is covered by the jalousie (which of course depends on the outdoor temperature).

Functional drawing of how the radiator jalousie (blind) works

If you are interested in exactly where the wire and tube go into the passenger compartment you can take advantage of this drawing. I made it for the article “Instrument panel, floor, parcel shelf, window frame (67, 68, 69)”. "#5" shows where it goes through the partition wall and "#g" where it goes through the firewall.

Hood muff

Or if you want to call it "Bonnet muff"....

Not yet tested. If it is an original MB-product or an aftermarket muff I don’t know. I got it from an old, within the Swedish Mercedes-community well known but now deceased person.

See also the article Engine cooling.