I just prefer not to have to mess with draining coolant, pulling the radiator, drying it, welding it, reinstalling it. I'll keep running my $$$ saving plastic tanked radiators, of which I've never had failure, and not mess with all that. ;)
Both of my Spectra Premiums were made in Canada. Not sure if that's still the case, however.
I also don't quite understand the aversion to plastic tanked radiators. Every OEM vehicle for the last 25 years has had one, and in my experience, they hold up very well.
I've had great luck with Spectra Premium radiators from RockAuto. I put one in my 84' about 5 years ago, and it's still going strong, and I also have one in my LS swapped crew cab. It's only 1 year old, but no issues so far.
They run around ~$100-120
Check out Cut Bro's on Facebook. They offer a kit to bolt later 14-bolt AAM 10.5" brakes onto the older 14 bolts. These use the drum-in-rotor e-brake w/ stock 2500HD calipers, if I recall right:
You could always run it on the firewall. Just make sure you put the big 150 amp fuse as close to the battery as possible, and use some good heavy gauge wire (8ga) to the distribution block, and you'll be fine.
C5s aren't bad, price wise. I bought a really low mile one for $17.5K. If I had to do it again, I'd get something with a few more miles; this one has some weird issues from sitting that I've been working on repairing. I've seen good examples go for 14-15k.
It's on the on the core support, engine bay side, on the driver's side. I relocated my battery to the driver's side to use the factory LS battery cables. If you aren't keen on relocating the battery, the passenger side might make more sense.
Nice Vette, btw! I've got a C5 (currently in pieces...
There isn't a hard and fast rule, per se, but in general, a 6" length of fusible link, 2 gauges smaller than the wire it feeds, is a good general rule of thumb.
For example, if your power feed to your harness was 14 gauge wire, you would use a 6" length of 16 gauge fusible link.
Yep, those are the two wires I was talking about. One of them should be running the the junction block on the firewall (which was originally fed from the battery terminal on the starter). I opted to run dedicated wires from my distribution block for the 2 running into the bulkhead, and then a...
Here is how I setup my wiring:
I have a heavy gauge wire straight from the battery, through a large fuse, then to a distribution block. From the distribution block, I power both power wires into the factory bulkhead, a wire to the junction block on the firewall for the HVAC, and a power wire to...
No need to use the truck wiring EXCEPT that you need to trace the original alternator's output wire to see if it's providing power to the bulkhead (there are two power IN wires on TBI trucks). You need to make sure you tie it into a 12v power source with a fusible link, as close to the battery...
You'll want to keep it, along with the check valve. The vacuum line (hard plastic) runs into the cab with the wiring for the blower motor. Even without AC, you need the vacuum ball to maintain proper control of the flaps in the heater box. Without the ball, they will open and close with engine...
I've got mine tapped into the top of the water pump. I'm using a Camaro LS3 pump, so there is a nice spot for it. You can just see the brass barb sticking out the back of the upper hose area of the pump: