Radiator options.

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Thinderchicken2023

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1989 Thunderbird SC 3.8L supercharged
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I have an 89 T-Bird SC, building a drift out of the chassis, currently swapping a 5.0 into the car. Now the fun, my radiator is split at the top. I’m currently looking at my options, who’s played around with fox body or SN95 radiators for replacements? The dimensions in the picture are for an SN95. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!!
 

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I'm using a Mishimoto aluminum cobra 3 pass radiator. It's a bit big for the bird, bit I got it in. Had to make brackets.
 
I can’t speak for the aftermarket options but would assume the same; I have a factory 03-04 Cobra radiator in mine. The changes I had to make was to widen the two lower mounts as well as to flip the top mount brackets upside down and get creative with the driver side one, which I simply removed the alignment tab of and used a piece of metal with a hole to sandwich the mount on that end.
 
Since the Fluidyne option is now effectively dead, according to this post, I'd like to add discussion on the Griffin here.

89-95 SC w/5-speed: https://www.supercoupeperformance.c...nce-radiator-w-o-trans-cooler-5-speed-cars-65
89-95 SC w/Automatic: https://www.supercoupeperformance.c...-radiator-with-trans-cooler-automatic-cars-74
4.6L: https://www.supercoupeperformance.c...46l-aluminum-radiator-super-high-capacity-311
5.0L: https://www.supercoupeperformance.c...aluminum-radiator-50l-super-high-capacity-345

The above is of course filtered through SCP. TBSC Shop technically carries them as well, but they're listed as out of stock there.

It seems that there were variants of the same base model parts over the years, with the new ones being superior but having a different part number. This post has some discussion on the options for SuperCoupes (key part slightly edited below):

For the 89-93 SC guys, the model is 8-00278 w/o tranny lines and 8-70278 w/ tranny lines. The older model 7-290BJ-FXX had 1" tubing and the new model has 1.25" tubing. It's a 2-row as well.

For the 94-95 SC guys, it's 8-00257 w/o tranny lines and 8-70257 w/ tranny lines.
Click to expand...

According to SCP, the new models (1.25" tubes) are referred to by Griffin as "Super-High Capacity" and the older ones (1" tubes) are "High Capacity". SCP also says that the older ones are still available from Griffin, but are considered a custom build now and so actually more expensive than the new models despite smaller tubing.

On the Griffin site itself you have:

89-93 SC/89-90 XR-7, Manual, supercharged: PN# 8-00278
89-93 Bird/89-92 Cougar, Manual, non-supercharged: PN# 8-00301
89-93 Bird/89-92 Cougar, Automatic, non-supercharged: PN# 8-70301 (note: mistakenly labelled as "Manual" on some parts of their site)
89-93 SC/89-90 XR-7, Automatic, supercharged: PN# 8-70278 (note: mistakenly labelled as "Manual" on some parts of their site)
94-97 3.8L, Automatic: PN# 8-70258 (note: mistakenly labelled as "Manual" on some parts of their site)
94-97 4.6L, Automatic: PN# 8-70259 (note: mistakenly labelled as "Manual" on some parts of their site)
94-97 3.8L, Manual: PN# 8-00258
94-97 4.6L, Manual: PN# 8-00259

Technically they don't seem to have a radiator for the 93 Cougar; I would guess that's a simple labelling error, but am not 100% sure.
 
Absolutely no difference between Thunderbird and Cougar in any given year, so just a typo. Interesting they have a manual option for a 4.6.
 
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