AF Radiator Curtain for IAME X30 – Carsons Creek Woodworking

Maybe it’s a noob thing, maybe it’s a personality and temperament thing, but I HATE fiddling with tape on the radiator in an effort to chase down the correct water temp for the given conditions. Drives me nuts. It seems like I spend the first five laps trying to get it dialed in, only to find that I need to chase it some more after running a few more laps. Often, for me, that means pitting and adding more tape because I took too much off. DRIVES. ME. NUTS.

Pitting to add more tape to the radiator!

Anyway, I couldn’t find a radiator curtain that is a bolt on option for my radiator, which is the one that came with my brand new x30 and comes with mounting lugs on the back that are narrower than the width of the radiator itself. AF makes one, but it’s not in stock anywhere that I can find and the vendors I have contacted have no interest in back ordering or drop shipping. Apparently they just don’t move fast enough.

So I bought the AF that is the correct width for my radiator, but does not include the brackets designed for my mounting lugs. No problem, I bought some aluminum flat bar and will make a set of brackets myself.

Since taking accurate relative dimensions would be difficult, I decided to model it in SketchUp, which produced perfect results on the first try.

SketchUp model of radiator with mounting lugs, curtain frame, and the brackets to be fabricated.

With the dimensions determined, its time to bend the flat bar.

1/8″ x 1″ aluminum flat bar from the big box store was used for the brackets.

Flat bar was bent with a vice and a hammer. I marked my inside bend point, squared it up with the vice jaws, and hammered it over while applying a light tug on the free end with my other hand.

Marked and drilled the holes and then radiused the corners and hit it with a blending disk on the angle grinder to clean up the apprentice marks.

It turned out quite well. MUCH better than tape!