Having fitted the radiator and viscous fan but forgetting the cowl, I had to remove the fan and fit the forgotten cowl. It needed a good clean, it was covered in dust and cobwebs. The expansion tank holder was covered in rust as were most of the nuts bolts and screws. After a lot of cleaning and derusting, I took the fan off and fixed the cowl in place.
It's annoying that the previous owner decided to hack the top of the cowl off and fix it back in place with cable ties. The height of laziness IMHO as it's easy enough to release the 5 screws holding the Cowling in place. I shall have to find a good replacement sometime.
Next it was back to plumbing in the heater control valve and heater matrix. I had found it particularly irritating that the valve ports and the matrix and pipes are all 16mm external diameter whilst the water pump and manifold ports are all 19mm. It's also annoying that the heater was an optional extra and so isn't included in the parts catalogue. It is In the optional parts catalogue (which I don't have) but without diagrams, so it's a part number searching game if you want these parts.
It would have been fairly simple if I could just buy the various connecting hoses to fit. The control valve is of course obsolete so chances of getting the correct size hoses seemed slim. I was iinformed that they were in fact all available, so I ordered up what I thought I needed. Of course, like an idiot I ordered from the standard parts catalogue and got myself 2" and 4" sections of 19mm ID hose for the manifold outlet to valve and return. I don't know why I thought they would work and sure enough, just straight 19mm ID hose. What I needed was reducing diameter hose. It turns out that that is exactly what the optional catalogue lists.
Part nos. for RHD are:
NRC2985 x2 (Heater box)
NRC3316 x2 (Hose Elbow)
NRC3317 x1 (Heater Valve hose)
NRC2984 x1 (Heater Valve hose)
ERC3485 x1 (Water Outlet to Heater Valve)
ERC3486 x1 (Heater Valve to Return Pipe
However, actually finding suppliers with these in stock and with some being now obsolete, and one short piece of rubber pipe priced at £50, I decided to do my own thing. I bought a 1m length of 16mm heater hose and cut to length! I heated one end with hot air gun until it softened enough to push onto the 19mm manifold outlet. I did same for water pump return port and everything else was correct size.
I did use new genuine LR S bend for pump to manifold bypass connection
The 16mm hose after moulding to go over 19mm pump outlet runs under the edelbrock manifold.
Similar situation at the control valve (excuse the old jubilee clips)
It's then just a case of joining up the valve with the original alloy pipes
and to the heater matrix
So, that's that out the way for now. I then filled the rad and block with water and checked for leaks. I need to pressurise it to get a proper check for water tightness but so far all leak free.