Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Aluminium radiator

Years ago I worked at Llanelli Radiators, now Kansei Calsonic. We made rads for British Leyland/rover/Land Rover etc plus for people like JCB/Caterham etc. We also supplied after market. Serck were a customer for some of our rads, they were copper/brass though , not Aluminium.. We also did specialist rads for military vehs, stationary engines(generators etc).
We even had Battle of Britain people bring Spitfire cores in for refurb, the factory was built in WWII and made them there and some staff worked on them so knew how to refurb them.
Serck are a major player in the business We saw you both today.
so no surprise they supply Morgan.
After market was a good field to be in and we made versions of rads for Fords,Vauxhalls and any we could, being sold to Marston, Halfords and anyone who wanted some. My cars at the time I was there had superb rads(! .

I fitted a Mulfab Ali rad to one of my traditional plus 8s and can highly recommend them. Peter will also make any mods required.

Firm has been in business for years, I remember seeing an advert for them in the Historic Commercial Vehicle London to Brighton programme. And that would have been in the late 60s.

They built the last and best radiator in my ownership of Woodstock, a friend did oversee the job but he was an agent of the company at the time.

Mulberry or them basically.

Thank you all for these informations. I note that Morgan uses Serck radiators which seems to be highly cheaper than Mulfab (439.95 vs 295) on the basis of 4/4 with a Focus 2002-05 motor.

Whatever radiator you fit make sure the rubber mounts are still flexible and have not gone hard. I recall being told the the flex of the Morgan chassis (which is normal) can stress the radiator if it is rigid in its mounts and then it may leak.

Basically, the radiator needs to be stiffly made with thick joints, and mounted flexibly. The flaw with a lot of radiators is the pipe to tank joint. On a normal car, not much strength needed, but on a Morgan - lots! So not only soldered well, but thickly too.

Last week I had to sort out my rad's stop mount.
The weld securing the top bracket to the tank had cracked. The bracket was out of line with the hole in the top brace, hence causing strain on the weld which has slowly split. The tank is fine.
I made the bolt hole elongated to remove the side strain.
I cleaned it up and used JBWeld and a secondary padded bracket as an initial repair. The JBWeld joint is strong!!!
I had to lever the rubber bobbin into place and the joint was solid. Looks like it will hold well.
The joint was prepped by using 120 grit paper followed by cleaning/ degreasing then a thin layer of JB.
I was a bit annoyed( but not surprised) that the fitting of the rad was done initially in a way to cause the strain on the joint with out of line bolt holes. Whoever did it needs a slap for a badge job instead of 5 minutes extra to get holes lined up.
GRRR.
I will see how long my repair lasts.
I was impressed with the JBWeld Original version.

Yes, I've had good results with JBWeld. Other people also say Belzona is good, but I've not tried it myself, and it seems to be a bit harder to get hold of, my local car accessories shop sells JB Weld, so that's what I use.

I once used JB Weld to repair a cast exhaust manifold flange, and it didn't fail over three plus years. It's very impressive stuff.

A big part of getting JB to be a success is the preparation, as with any adhesive.
Surface of the right texture and completely clean, then mix adhesive to correct ratio, followed by suitable curing. Mine was left from midday to following evening.
Small clamps held it in place.