A couple weeks ago I took the Jetta to the grocery store. When I came out there was a little pool of pink coolant behind the driver's front wheel. Whoops! It appeared to be leaking from the lower driver's side corner of the radiator. So I had the guy down the street replace the radiator with one I'd picked up.
I no sooner got it home (about 100 yards) and it was leaking again. So last week I got a Uhaul trailer and ran it in to my TDI guy. He pulled out the radiator and it turns out the replacement was leaking in the same dang place as the first one. Furthermore it turns out the mount holes were all rusted out and the problem was that there was really nothing to hold the radiator in place. The bottom mounts are just two holes and the top mount is just two pins. With the bottom rusted out the pins couldn't hold the radiator so it flopped around and thrashed a hole. The TDI guy drilled a couple new bottom holes which set the radiator over half an inch so while the bottom was held good the top pins now missed the radiator entirely.
We zip tied the radiator in place so it couldn't hurt itself and I hauled it home. Once home I made a couple brackets that slot into the top of the radiator and use the original pins so it can't move in any direction. This summer when the weather is warm I'll pull the front end apart again and weld up the original holes so the radiator can use its original mounts again. When we had it apart I noticed the frame horn on the driver's side is rusted out so I'll weld up that too.
No pictures of this sadly and I've missed a couple days of writing with all the excitement, now I've got to write a couple things to make it up...
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