On 29 Mar 2014, at 2:04 am, [email protected] wrote: > I recently made an interesting find in my barn. It is a "Winterfront" made > by Pine Manufacturing Co. This mounted over the front of a flat front > radiator typical in the early 1930's. I don't know if it is model specific. In > any case, it has a row of louvers which are thermostatically opened by a > thermostat as the engine warms up. It must have been a popular item, I Googled > it and came up with a picture of a rather large factory. The text notes > that they lost popularity after alcohol was replaced by "permanent > antifreeze.
I remember helping my father install a radiator blind on his 1965 Austin Cambridge. The idea was that this sat on the grill side of the radiator and could be wound up by a small winder installed inside the car. The overall aim was to help warm the car up faster and also to avoid over cooling it when driving in UK winters. The following year we emigrated to Australia and brought the car with us but I doubt that we ever used the radiator blind again. I remember the first summer we were here attempting to drive to Geelong (80Km away) but only got half way before the old car boiled. I also recall reading about car block heaters which were integrated into the cooling system and plugged in to the mains, the idea being that the coolant would be nice and warm when you started the car so instant heating. I thought this was better than the Volkswagen 411 heater which had a timer and could be set to start to burn petrol 30 minutes before you got to drive the car - I always had visions of arriving to find the car far too hot to get into :-) Huw Davies | e-mail: [email protected] Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green" -- to be removed from alfa, see http://www.digest.net/bin/digest-subs.cgi or email "unsubscribe alfa" to [email protected]
