Thanks Dieselgman, and 38ac. Dog food seizure! that's funny
Better than the real kind I guess, so a happy ending.
The worst part about the mice and metal is the corrosion they cause. They built a nest in a drawer with my lathe chucks and other accessories when I hadn't used the lathe for a couple months. The 4 jaw chuck, angle blocks, 123 blocks, Jacobs chucks and a bunch of other stuff were covered in used mouse bedding, and everything rusted and corroded where they were.
They also chewed the spigot off of two plastic gasoline cans in the barn last winter, and chewed up the plastic pistol grip on the garden hose. They seem to like some kinds of plastic. They love to make swiss cheese out of a nicely folded tarp, and they build nests in the air cleaners of our cars -- even though we use them regularly.
They get inside the instrument panel of my '51 John Deere Model M tractor if it sits a week anywhere, once ate the insulation off the ignition switch wires, and have been known to jump out of the cast iron panel and run across my lap when I start it. Gotta remember to stay calm when that happens and not pop the clutch and abandon ship! I'm not afraid of mice, but it's startling when you don't expect it and pull the starter knob and something furry comes out of the engine right at you. Little boogers!
Back to cooling. I figured the angled radiator would move both the air and the hot water by siphoning and convection. While making it vertical or horizontal would only do one or the other.It seems to work well -- at least for wintercooling/heating. It isn't clear in the picture probably, but the radiator also angles in it's own plane so that the radiator cap is at the highest point. And i have a coolant recovery bottle that you don't see in the photos.
I also insulated the upward going hot water hose from the engine to the radiator, but left the return uninsulated. The photo of the engine above shows the pipe fitting thermostat on the right, but the hose connections hadn't been made yet. The spots on the paint were from a little concrete water when I poured the retaining wall in front of the engine (spots cleaned off later) that holds the gravel and railroad ties the engine bearer is bolted to. All of that stuff is on top of a horse stable pad, and that in turn is on top of a concrete slab. Maybe that is confusing. It goes like this: Concrete slab, horse pad, sand gravel mix. And embedded in the gravel are railroad ties.