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We had a customer come in with a failed radiator support on a 2007 Corvette. We do mainly hot rod and restoration work but the client had already been to the dealer three times with the same complaint. Each time they replaced the support and all the ancilliary parts that broke as a result, the last time they installed wheels all with no luck.
We removed the support, it came out in six pieces. After welding it all back together I realized it was just going to break again, it was just too low. The wheels or nylon skid plates won't fix anything because the support breaks when the weight of the car bears down on it. All the damage was from a upwards hit, no amount of sliding will defeat gravity.
I cut up the stock support and removed the "U" shaped portion of the brace. This was replaced with .250 wall 5052 aluminum square tubing. The end result is the lowest portion of the brace was raised by a little more than two inches.
If there's interest I could make these using a new brace to start with and modifying it. There's about 6 billable hours in welding and fabrication, this pencils out to $450 above the cost of the brace. I don't think I would start with a used one, the material is marginal to start with and it's pretty badly contaminated after use due to it's location. The used brace I welded up in the photos was very hard to weld, not pretty at all.
I'm pretty careful with my C6 and I still wacked that support a few times which broke it. Breaking that meant the radiator was hanging only on the driver side support and bouncing a bit while driving which put a bit of stress on one of the coolant lines which cracked the T-fitting in it. This cause a small amount of coolant to leak out down onto the control module for the radiator fan which fried it so I had no radiator fan. This caused my engine to get up to 260 degrees once while idling. Didn't know of any of the issues until the engine overheated. Now I'm getting all that fixed which is expensive but what really worries me is if I've damaged either of the head gaskets.
So anyone who says that oh you should be more careful when driving a car like this can be quiet because it's honestly a poor piece of design and in my case has lead to many more issues. I'm an automotive engineer and can see why they made that bracket as such because it's cheaper to make it like they did instead of having it swing up out of the way of being hit but come on. Spend a bit more money so that the thing that mounts a vital powertrain component doesn't ever get hit and broken by any of the thousands of people who drive these cars. Like seriously, that should not be the lowest hanging thing on the car. The guys at the Corvette shop I brought my car in for repair told me they do the radiator bracket fix all the time so it happens to quite a bit of Corvette owners.
Going to chime in has the driver of a C6 lives in the community who streets do not have storm drains rather large dips at every intersection. Cardless of how careful or slow you drive and how much you try to cram the car through intersections, invariably ground out the bottoms of these supports. I'm also convinced that the stresses that pressure on the supports puts on the radiator itself is one of the causes of the numerous cracked radiator plastic tanks that we encounter. Maybe if GM had not blessed us with plastic radiator tanks this not be such an issue? I know these mounts are not directly welded to the sides of the radiators but I think the forces going up when we bought them out the car stresses various components. I drive through five search intersections just getting out onto the main street every morning. And traverse the same streets coming home. It's not a matter of rerouting my commute, yes every intersection has a dip that is a good 8 to 12 inches deep.
The lower radiator support in it's current form has been in use on the Corvette since the introduction of the 1997 model year car. You are now the third person that I know of that has broken one. I'm guessing that if it were a "frail piece of junk" that we would have heard a little more about it with over 425,000 cars produced with that same part in those model years. Probably worth noting that it is not a skid plate and not intended to be impacted from the bottom. It is a support and intended to have a compressive load on it from the top (ie, the radiator) not necessarily the weight of the car pushing up on it from the bottom.
Curious, How is it breaking? That support is more than 12" off the ground and even at full suspension travel it would not impact the ground. I don't think that bottoming out is really the root cause here.
You must be referring to a 4x4 truck and not a C6 Corvette. The radiator support/skid plate is more like 3 inches off the ground and not the "more than 12" off the ground you mentioned in your post.
Whether or not driver error is a factor I don't know but damaging the radiator support is not a common occurrence. The fact its made of aluminum instead of steel does not mean its a piece of junk...there's a reason its made of aluminum. From reading your posts it seems you're unhappy with the C6. Perhaps the F150 would be better suited to your needs.
BTW my friend at Surplus Armor Technologies has been working on an after market solution for this problem. It's a prototype but I think it holds promise for protecting the C6 radiator mount.
Hey I realize this is 11 years later but I just had to say something just in case you come back. You and most others on this thread are ---holes. You guys are jumping all over this guy for breaking something that is the lowest hanging part of the car. Skid bar or not? Then why does Chevy even refer to it as a skid bar and why Is t shaped the way it is? Because it is a @#%$@×+ skid bar. And who mounts radiators on skid bars? Chevy does. And who the hell are you to decide that it is not a common occurrence. But then a few sentences later make reference to your friend designing a solution to this problem. Are you a moron? People don't search for or design solutions to problems that don't commonly occur. You are a passive aggressive couch critic and not a very good one. Yes the skid bar getting broken is very common and so is scraping the splitter/lower bumper. Don't repaint, vinyl rap the lower bumper and paint it when you are ready to sell it.
The lower radiator support in it's current form has been in use on the Corvette since the introduction of the 1997 model year car. You are now the third person that I know of that has broken one. I'm guessing that if it were a "frail piece of junk" that we would have heard a little more about it with over 425,000 cars produced with that same part in those model years. Probably worth noting that it is not a skid plate and not intended to be impacted from the bottom. It is a support and intended to have a compressive load on it from the top (ie, the radiator) not necessarily the weight of the car pushing up on it from the bottom.
Curious, How is it breaking? That support is more than 12" off the ground and even at full suspension travel it would not impact the ground. I don't think that bottoming out is really the root cause here.
really? Mine is about 4 inches from the ground, I've broken 3 in 3 years, one bump is all it takes. POS!
This is a real weakness in design. People have suggested making a steel replica, but that would lead to more damage than just the cheap radiator support. I'm on Number 4 on my 2006.
St. Jude Donor '08-'09-'10-'11-'12-'13x3- '14-'15-'16-'17-'18-'19-'20-'21-'22-'23
Originally Posted by Scbdude
Hey I realize this is 11 years later but I just had to say something just in case you come back. You and most others on this thread are ---holes. You guys are jumping all over this guy for breaking something that is the lowest hanging part of the car. Skid bar or not? Then why does Chevy even refer to it as a skid bar and why Is t shaped the way it is? Because it is a @#%$@×+ skid bar. And who mounts radiators on skid bars? Chevy does. And who the hell are you to decide that it is not a common occurrence. But then a few sentences later make reference to your friend designing a solution to this problem. Are you a moron? People don't search for or design solutions to problems that don't commonly occur. You are a passive aggressive couch critic and not a very good one. Yes the skid bar getting broken is very common and so is scraping the splitter/lower bumper. Don't repaint, vinyl rap the lower bumper and paint it when you are ready to sell it.
I would probably stop running over stuff and hitting the curb. There is no way your "Bottoming out" on the road. Your either hitting driveways too fast or at the wrong angle or your running it over parking curbs / stops.
02-20-2015, 06:21 PM
