things up really good. Because when the guy is out there in his collector
car, and he’s out in the middle of nowhere and his coolant is leaking —
that’s not a good call to get on Monday!
“The cores we use cost me more than $300 now, just for the core. I
can get cheaper ones, but why do that and risk getting one that doesn’t
cool? We engineer the core so you can be anywhere in the country and
your car will not run hot. I’ve got some in Australia where it’s always
hot, and they never run them hot... I had one guy, I made him a
radiator. He had been taking his car to Hot August Nights and his car
was overheating so he had to drive with his heater on, and his wife was
NOT happy. I told him I’d make him a radiator that would never
overheat, and I know that it won’t!”
Schirmer and his sidekick Lenny aren’t the only ones working on
radiators at Glen-ray, however. The company has 10 employees and a
stream of regular drive-in customers who need radiator and air-
conditioning work on their daily drivers. The shop also does a lot of
work on semi-tractors, farm tractors and heavy equipment radiators.
Oh, and you’ll still find Ray Sr. in the back working on any old or
unusual pieces that come through the door. “Dad can do it with one eye
closed, he’s been doing this for so long,” Bob laughed. “If Dad can’t fix
it, it’s junk. Flat out. Raymond’s got a pretty good touch. Lenny’s got a
pretty good touch, but Dad works on anything older than about 1960,
because he knows more about the older stuff than I do.
“For me, typically it’s the ’69 to ’71 cars, the big blocks, that I work
on. But we’ll do anything from a little snowmobile radiator up to a D11
Caterpillar. We’ve done old Mercedes, old MG’s ... Pretty much, if it’s
got a radiator, we’ll get it in the door.”
For now, Schirmer is content to keep the MoPar big-block radiator end
of the business a two-man operation and let it grow slowly over time.
The company’s new website, http://www.hemiradiators.com, has already
helped the shop become more visible around the U.S. and abroad, and
Schirmer plans to continue to make appearances at big gatherings such
as Carlisle where large numbers of Hemi car owners might congregate. If
things go well, he hopes to add 22-inch radiators to the product mix in
the future.
“We only do 26 inches, we don’t do 22-inch ones,” he said. “We were
getting into 22-inch ones in 2008 when the economy tanked, but I have
singke
(singke)
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