[Ford-ferguson] Dexta Radiator

[David Buchner]

So, here it is snowblowing season again and I wasted all summer and 
fall putting an addition on my house instead of polishing my boat and 
doing tractor repairs like I said I was going to.

So I'm scrambling to replace the radiator in my Fordson Dexta which was 
leaking like a sieve last winter -- and hasn't managed to magically 
cure itself over the summer.

The consensus of my various sources has been that simply repairing this 
old a radiator is likely to fail since it'll just spring a leak 
somewhere else. It is 45 years old, after all. I looked into having it 
"re-cored" where they attach a new vertical-tubes-with-fins middle part 
to my existing top and bottom "tanks" -- between 300 and 500 dollars. A 
local shop had a source, and was going to sell me a brand spankin' new 
one made in Ireland for about $300, so I figured why not go with that 
-- less driving back and forth and waiting. But when I went to actually 
order it, it turned out to be --surprise!-- out of stock in the 
warehouse, supposed to be on the way, they were expecting it a week 
ago, could be weeks or months...

Any other options? Any other sources I should try? The couple of 
old-tractor-parts businesses on the web I called don't have one. The 
last time I tried ordering a part for this tractor from a Ford dealer, 
they looked it up and figured that as long as it had a part number in 
their computer it was available, they put in an order, and I had to 
wait a month for them to find out that, no, it really wasn't available 
anymore -- that was just a tease.

Should I try getting it repaired after all?