the aftermarket manifold I'm using on my '50 Olds 303 did not come with a water crossover, the only aftermarket water crossover I have won't fit with the setup I'm running and I didn't want to use a remote thermostat, so I thought I might just make one. I started by gathering up some scrap plate and straight pipe, and bought some weldable 90's, picked a thermostat housing that was small and had the neck at the right angle. I'm using 3/8" plate for the therostat flange so using the thermostat housing as a pattern I layed out the hole centers and took it to the drill press, first using a hole saw with the outside diameter the same as the outside diameter of the thermostat, drilling down about the thickness of the thermostat flange, then switching to a smaller hole saw with an outside diameter about the same as the inside diameter of the first holesaw and drilled all the way through the plate leaving a shallow step for the thermostat flange to set in.
next I put a 1/8" drill bit in the drill press and ran a couple pilot holes through the plate at the bolt centers, followed by a 5/16" and tapped them with a 3/8" coarse tap bolted the thermostat housing to the flange and traced out the outline of the flange then I used the bandsaw to roughcut the flange out and the Suzy Homemaker disc sander to clean up the sawn edge
next is the body for the thermostat to set in, using 2" ID pipe I chopped a piece of scrap just long enough to fit the smaller pipe "arms" to cut a piece of 3/16" plate to close up the bottom, tack it in place, welded it and cleaned it up a bit.
I had a couple of the rear water block-off/heater hose connector plates that I had already opened up for some 1" copper pipe on my temporary water crossover so I scavenged them and will reuse them here. so with some carefull eyeballing and minimal measuring I cut and trimmed two of the elbows and a short length of pipe to make the first "arm" and tacked it together, traced around the pipe on the housing body, blew a hole with the electric torch, cleaned it a bit with a file and tacked the new arm to the body
then I bolted it to the head and repeated the process for the other arm, tacked it together and welded it all up, checking and rechecking fit all the way ground the welds smooth and shot some paint on it
bought a molded hose with an elbow about the right angle that I cut out of it and spliced to a flexible hose the right length and connected it all up, installed a new thermostat and topped the coolant off, fired it up and checked for leaks, all was tight and it came up to temp nicely and held it just fine. I've had it on the road for only a few hours since and it seems to be very well behaved and I think it looks way better than what I had in there before I still may look for a flex hose with the 45 built in eventualy...
you could do this to relocate your thermostat on other motors too, Nailheads, Cadillacs and Studebakers would be perfect candidates
Paul, I always watch for your tech posts. They are great and show that you don't need a huge shop full of expensive tools to get the job done, just common sense. Thanks, Mike
Verrrrrry cool. Looks real good. I was actually looking for a water cross over for my 394 OLDS for over a year. I finally did find one but the guy wanted $500 bucks. Now all I have to spend is $20 or less. Thanks for the great idea.
excellent work yet again. that looks way better than the x's i was looking at earlier. i always like checking out your tech posts and have defiantly learned a lot along the way! thanks agian and i look forward to whatever is next haha keith
Dang, that almost looks "professional" and at least 20X better than I could do. With my crap welding skills, there is no way I could get that to fit properly and not leak like a fountain at Disney Land. Very nice?
I will get in line with the praise. This, to me, is what hot rodding is all about. Using metal to make parts.
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