63R-1016 Question!

[mfg]

In a period road test photo of Avanti 63R-1016, it appears that the fan shroud is missing…. If it was, I wondered if it was destroyed when the twin supercharger belts blew off the R3 engine during the HRM performance evaluation of the car?

A Studebaker Avanti being driven in a warm climate (California) would almost certainly overheat without a fan shroud…. Interesting!

[Nelson]

I always thought the car probably had frequent engine changes so they just never reinstalled a fan shroud. However, the broken idler during the road test could be the reason. I remember Andy saying the car always overheated which it most certainly would with no fan shroud. You would think Andy would have realized that? That was back in the day when Avantis had shrouds with the bottom section in it. Later everyone started  cutting the bottom of the shroud away which made changing water pumps a much easier job.

[mfg]

17 hours ago, Nelson said:

I always thought the car probably had frequent engine changes so they just never reinstalled a fan shroud. However, the broken idler during the road test could be the reason. I remember Andy saying the car always overheated which it most certainly would with no fan shroud. You would think Andy would have realized that? That was back in the day when Avantis had shrouds with the bottom section in it. Later everyone started  cutting the bottom of the shroud away which made changing water pumps a much easier job.

Yes… that water pump thing… it did seem extremely common for water pumps to fail on Studebaker Avantis…. Some owners felt that, on R2 models, and R1 with A/C versions, too much pressure was applied to the water pump bearings from the supercharger and or A/C system system.

Personally, I think the frequent water pump failures happened because of Avanti owners replacing the original water pump with a standard duty non-flanged type, which really wasn’t designed to be strong enough to take the extra pressure.