The saga continues on my fan blade story. Sometimes I do the stupidest things. It seems to get worse the older I get. This one is titled "Jumping to Conclusions."
I got the radiator out with no problems, but it kept bugging me why it would start leaking after I put everything back together but had not leaked a drop in over 30 miles of driving. I was trying to get my moto-meter off but wasn't having much luck. The same heavy-handed ham that stripped the threads on both front spindles plus one of the lug bolts must have put the moto-meter on. I guess he didn't trust the little set screw.
While I was waiting for some penetrating oil to work (which it did not) I was straightening out some of the fins that had gotten bent before I bought the car. I also inspected the radiator at the point where I could see that the errant fan blade had struck. The bare metal that I thought was from one of the tubes turned out to be the overflow tube. The cooling tubes were undamaged.
At this point I decided to put water in the radiator again to check for the leak. As I put water in it started to come out like it did when in the car. BUT, it was coming out the overflow tube, not a hole in the radiator.
I find it interesting that you can't put water into the radiator without some of it coming out the over flow tube. Not a big deal if you're just using plain water, but I don't want my antifreeze/anticorrosion solution going to the floor. When I refill it I'm going to put a piece of hose on the overflow tube as I pour in the coolant.