Unplanned Radiator work on the '67 F250

I posted a little bit ago about getting the F250 up and running. It didn't last long! I think I also mentioned that the power steering fluid was leaking somewhere. Well, I tried running the truck in the driveway, and there was no obvious leak. So, I took the truck out onto the road to test the steering under motion, and the truck died less than 50 yards away from the Sheep homestead! 

It was pretty obvious that the battery was the problem. Dang! I'm fortunate to have several good neighbors, and one of them used his modern F250 to tow me back to the top of my driveway. But that's not the end, because when I got out of the cab, I discovered coolant was leaking out onto the driveway. Oh dear! I have not had a lot of luck with the truck since I got it home - the fact that it made it home at all is starting to feel very lucky! 

The next photo shows a close-up of the problem after I removed the radiator: the drain valve at the base of the radiator has been sheared off, probably due to contact with the tow strap. Oops!

I don't have braising equipment, so I took the radiator (and the valve) down to Pankey's Radiator in Hayward, and they fixed it in five minutes. I am lucky that I live in an area that has so much automotive support close by.

The next bit was more difficult. Most people, if not everybody else in the world, would simply re-install the radiator. But I just could not do that without cleaning it first; there was too much rusty colored crud around the top to ignore. 

This is after power washing in the back yard...much cleaner!

Some of the rusty crap turned out to be discoloration and missing paint. So, the next question, is do I paint the radiator before I re-install it? 

I checked my spray paint stash and came up with two cans of black gloss which were probably bought to use on the Mustang. The radiator is too big too for my in-house spray booth, so I took it out to the back yard: 

Not the best paint job, to say the least, but still a vast improvement: 

Painted the radiator cap at the same time:

This is a few days later after I re-installed the radiator and some shiny new stainless steel hose clamps and replaced the battery. The F250 seems to be running ok now, so my next jobs are to try and sort out the sloppy steering and bring the turn signals and the horn back to life.

To be continued...