Chicken Wire…. Really?

Chicken Wire…. Really?

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Discussion

Storm Guy

Original Poster:

141 posts

128 months

Sunday 22nd November 2015
quotequote all
Had (have) got a small suspected coolant leak but couldn’t get to check all the areas around the front of the radiator.

The existing grill, as some of you will know is riveted in and consists of black chicken wire and looks like it obviously went in before the radiator when the car was originally built. So one thing led to another and ended up in the following.


Within reason, I think all areas should be relatively accessible - and not having ready access to the front of the rad seemed a tad unreasonable, if only simply for cleaning, maintenance and the like.
The wire mesh is held in place by a flat narrow plate riveted to the bottom and bottom of the aperture. The rivets themselves seem to be a screwed in type (?) After drilling off the heads to release the plate and mesh, the remaining parts were dremelled flush.
The mesh was fairly deformed (with some gaps) after twenty odd years and the grime behind the mesh pretty dire.
Also, the tiny coolant leak, which seemed to have been accumulating over some considerable time, and noticed only after a penny sized drop was found on the garage floor, had slowly stripped the paint from the fibre glass and stained it pink.
Sourced some good quality stainless woven mesh, and replaced some corroded original steel parts with stainless hardware – including the horn brackets.
Picked up some anodised aluminium angle, unfortunately not black, for the top part of the new grill. This was notched to slide (and anchor) into the top of the aperture.
Top – old bracket after some cleaning was still not good enough so cut some new stainless ones.
A central s/s bolt serves as a useful handle to aid fitting/ removal.


Happily - I now have an easily removable grill with the release of two nuts and lock washers to the horn brackets.
A little weight gain – though nothing to worry about, old grill appx 280g, new 960g – but result is a more quality item (even if a little OTT for a grill), more befitting the Griff me thinks,
Oh …and probably time for new rad too.
Pics tell the story.

Existing Mesh


Rivet fixing through steel plate holding mesh. Note flaking paint and pink coolant staining to fibre glass.

New stanless mesh

Drilled out existing fxings

New and old mesh comparison

Mock up of the new mesh, compared with the existing

Rubber edging (that mesh is sharp!)

Finished grill

Painted aperture

Installed showing central bolt 'handle'

Anodised angle - fit at top.

Before and after

Black anodised angle (...for the future)

rev-erend

21,404 posts

283 months

Sunday 22nd November 2015
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Nice job biggrin

Loubaruch

1,164 posts

197 months

Sunday 22nd November 2015
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Thanks Assad,Very smart.

Chicken wire, tie wraps and silicon sealant dont you just love TVRs !

Another job to do.

Hedgehopper

1,537 posts

243 months

Sunday 22nd November 2015
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Very nice......thanks for sharing.

portzi

2,296 posts

174 months

Sunday 22nd November 2015
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Loubaruch said:
Thanks Assad,Very smart.

Chicken wire, tie wraps and silicon sealant dont you just love TVRs !

Another job to do.
That's why we love our cars so much usually an easy fix with a bit of hard graft, unlike some marques that are impossible to work on by any budding car mechanic hobbyist. smile

IainGriff

80 posts

141 months

Sunday 22nd November 2015
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Excellent, very informative, I've been thinking of doing this for some time, give me something to do over Xmas!

dnb

3,330 posts

241 months

Sunday 22nd November 2015
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Good job there - much better than standard. I threw away the old mesh several years ago to do this, and never got around to finishing it. You might have just convinced me to move it up the job queue a bit.

Storm Guy

Original Poster:

141 posts

128 months

Monday 23rd November 2015
quotequote all
Thank you all for the comments folks -
Loubaruch said:
...
Chicken wire, tie wraps and silicon sealant dont you just love TVRs !...
Lol - absolutley!

BTW ..One of the lines in my OP seems not to have attached the pic..so the line above which reads.."Top – old bracket after some cleaning was still not good enough so cut some new stainless ones"...should have related to the pic below.


Hoover.

5,988 posts

241 months

Wednesday 25th November 2015
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when I had a coolant leak all the coolant collected in the nose... and only trickeled out when it reached the required level.... took me ages to work out why every time I went for a drive after the car had been standing why there was a trail of water

Mines a precat though, so the nose is different.

HKGriff

157 posts

112 months

Thursday 10th December 2015
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Hi Asaad - looks great. I am buying the mesh long distance, i.e. I cannot measure the Griff. What size mesh (LxB) did you buy? Mines a later 500 ('96 model). Thanks.

PeteGriff

1,262 posts

156 months

Thursday 10th December 2015
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HKGriff said:
Hi Asaad - looks great. I am buying the mesh long distance, i.e. I cannot measure the Griff. What size mesh (LxB) did you buy? Mines a later 500 ('96 model). Thanks.
Hi HK, I did the same on my precat 430 a couple of years ago. I used 1/2" mesh (was actually smaller but not much). Purchased half a metre (1000mm x 500mm) which is enough to do two sets easily. The price when I bought it was about £25 including delivery. The original looked just like galvanised square holed chicken wire! Like above I fitted stainless plates to the mesh. I then fitted it in place, marked through where I wanted holes, drilled and tapped M5, then used nice polished M5 countersunk socket heads. Regards, Pete

Storm Guy

Original Poster:

141 posts

128 months

Thursday 10th December 2015
quotequote all
HKGriff said:
Hi Asaad - looks great. I am buying the mesh long distance, i.e. I cannot measure the Griff. What size mesh (LxB) did you buy? Mines a later 500 ('96 model). Thanks.
Many thanks.
As per Pete's reply, 1m x 500mm should be more than enough, though 750 x 300 should suffice. The distance between the two horn brackets is appx 730mm. The vertical distance (actually the angled distance of the aperture) is a bit under 300mm, so subject to your final detail/bends and fixing detail top and bottom, 300 should be good enough.
HTH

HKGriff

157 posts

112 months

Monday 14th December 2015
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Thanks Pete and Assad.

bomb

3,691 posts

283 months

Sunday 14th February 2016
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Inspired by this thread, I joined forces with a friend and we made new grilles for our Griffs.

See below our efforts.











Storm Guy

Original Poster:

141 posts

128 months

Sunday 14th February 2016
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Awesome - glad it helped

QBee

20,904 posts

143 months

Sunday 14th February 2016
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Back in the mid-80s I went through three aircon condensers (the rad-like thing in front of the rad, for those who don't know) in 18 months in a Renault I had, thanks to the county council surface dressing the country roads I used to get to work. After the third failure I made up a mesh just like these, took it with me to the Renault dealer, and asked them to fit it when they changed the condenser, to reduce the number of £650 replacements they had to do in the future. They were very impressed and wrote to Renault and sent them photos. I had no more punctured condensers.

I have just had to have my Chimaera rad re-cored thanks to flying stones.....no protection for the rad in a 99 Chim.
So your excellent piece of work, OP, is not as daft as it sounds. clap

bomb

3,691 posts

283 months

Sunday 14th February 2016
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Storm Guy said:
Awesome - glad it helped
It certainly did. We modelled ours on your design, and it does the same job, and looks the same. We made two.

We have materials to make another 2 off, if anyone is interested - PM me.