Reply To: 1931: Shutters Or Thermostat?

[Luke Dwyer]

Interesting idea on the freeze-plug to restrict flow.

I have shutters on my ’32 Packard and although I have the original radiator the thermostatic bellows does not work. David is right that blocking the shutters open appears not to be harmful. Last I checked new bellows are expensive.

But since I like to drive the car in the cold weather I wanted to allow the engine to warm up quicker and to maintain a temperature in the driving range. Hard to achieve when its below freezing.

So I designed a manual hand crank which allows me to open and close the shutters from the inside of the car. My car has glove boxes on either side of the dash so I could hide it in there. Simple and works great. But you do need to pay attention if you start out with the shutters closed. Before I got used to it, I did peg the temperature gauge a couple of times.