so some other pics I forgot to upload related to the 617 vs the 616 installation.
Aftermarket electric fan I bought off amazon, its actually quite nice for the 30 something dollars I paid. (!). It also had great reviews, im interested to see how it holds up, and i have it rigged for a manual on off right now until I work out the temperature controls and rig something up.
fits pretty nicely with the 617, good amount of space-
I had to get a little interesting with the coolant passage that comes out of the driver rear of the head. On the 616 I went up and over, but that created a lot of room issues for the air filtration, so this time decided to go down, under, and around.
It travels behind the oil filter, around the lower oil pan, then up to the connection under the climate control airbox
also made a slight, but very important change that I neglected earlier. The GM radiator uses an upper and lower fan shroud as a clamshell to hold the radiator in place, with the 616, the lower shroud was brittle and shattered, so I only had a modified upper shroud.
For 8 thousand miles ive been driving around with the radiator staying in place only by the stiffness of these rubber mounts in the lower position, with no additional support to them!-
Fortunately some metal tabs worked perfectly to support the rubber and prevent an eventual disaster
Here is my stock benz downpipe-
I have to do a little follow up work here, as you can see the bellows mount is broken and loose-
I was able to extract the broken bolt and am working on remaking or repairing this bracket.
I have it bolted up with the upper bolt and have the exhaust almost done, but I definitely need to return and fix this long term
