Well the shepard rad is in the car. Total install from start to finish took me about 3 hours, including having to remove my KW DIC to get the rad in and out. In addition to the overflow nipple facing the wrong way for the earlier style cars, the fitment problems with putting this rad in an earlier car are the passenger side rad mount is different, and the IC bracket did not fit properly. I don't know if the IC mount issue is because of the different year application, or just poor design, but not one of the existing holes in the bracket lined up with the bolt-holes for it in the rad. One was close, but still had to be enlarged for everything to fit, and all the others required new holes entirely, and there was about 2" of the bottom of the bracket that had to be cut off because it would have hit the aluminum part of the rad. It took some measuring, and assembling/disassembling the rad and IC bracket about 3 times to get everything marked out, drilled properly, and fitted together. Once it was all together, I went to test fit it in the car, and the driver's side mounting bracket was about 1/2" too far to the outside, so I had to cut that down to slide the rubber mount closer in towards the rad, and that was solved. The passenger side mount is a completely different style where there is a bracket with a bushing that slides over a dowel on the rad, and then the bracket bolts to the rad support. Luckily, I happened to have a couple of those brackets laying around from parting out other tbirds, and the bolt hole is in the same place on both the earlier and later rad supports, so that part was easy. The next thing I noticed was that the fan doesn't sit flush on the new rad like it did on the original one, and there was about a 1/2" gap along the bottom, so I pulled the fan back off, used some foam tape (meant for installing a pickup truck cap) between the fan and the rad, then re-installed the fan. Once all that was done, all that was left was to extend the overflow hose, so I found a piece of pipe laying around the shop that was the right size and had an almost 90 degree bend in it and used that and some extra hose to extend the overflow hose, filled it up with coolant, and we are good to go. On the ride home, the car does run notably cooler. I have a 180 t-stat in the car, and driving home the needle was just below the N, whereas with the old copper rad it would usually sit right in the middle of the O. No leaks so far, so I guess regardless of how the welds look, they are doing their job. All in all, 3 hours and $175 is better than 1 hour and $600 for a Griffin, so I guess I'm satisfied. I probably wouldn't buy another one, and would look at other options hoping to find something better, but if you have patience, a measuring tape, and a drill, you can make this rad work in an early car without having to do any welding on aluminum or anything crazy, so it is an option for people who don't mind putting a little time into it.