Is SSI Correct with This Information.

[Rot 911]

Debate I am having with a friend and neither of us are sure what is the correct answer. The picture is of a brand new SSI heat exchanger for a 3.2. As you can see the flanges are all of different heights. When SSI was questioned about what appears to be a defect, here is their response: "The tubes are interference fit - in other words are tight but still can move. They often do move during shipment. Bolt them up and as you do so they will conform to the correct heights."
According to SSI, they get this call all the time, and tell the installers the same thing. The nuts will pull all the flanges straight and the tubes to the correct height. They further said that if the height difference to too great to let the nuts do the work, then you could just tap the tallest tube with a rubber mallet to shorten it.

What says anyone experienced with the thick flange SSI's. My only experience was with a set for my '72 and the flanges were all even on that set.

Well crap all that is showing up is a red x for a picture. Anyway can anyone shed some light on this without the picture?

[smestas]

Kurt,

You need to remove some bad characters from the file name and repost it. Try to keep it basic with just regular letters (abc) and numbers (123). The software that Pelican uses doesn't seem to like things like *'%$#@! in the file names.

[RoninLB]

I'm not sure if this helps, but

I was concerned about the level flange height before I installed the thick flange SSI. It wasn't exactly a good looking straight line. I just fitted and hand slammed them around and used the nuts to pull the flanges gently into place.. then tightened afterwards.. If you manually move around the tubes before install you'll see that there is a lot of flexability involved.

[Rot 911]

Ron, turns out both you and SSI are correct. When you tighten the nuts up the flanges all pull into place. Thanks for the info!