Finally got around to tearing down the 72. Pulled the core support and its flimsy. In all four corners are large cracks. It had ben repaired before but it cracked again. The truck afaik has never been in a serious accident. The original front bumper had been bent a tiny bit, and the original grill was flat on the outside edges. So the truck bumped something at one point in its life.

Is this a common issue? And seeing my truck is a 72, up to what year core support can I use? I can get a 77 core support fairly cheap.

Pic of one corner

First pic was lower left. This one is lower right

Upper left

Upper right

I think you need a frame brace or 2..

If you're looking for a replacement, 72-76 is what you need. The 77-78 supports have the turn signal pigtail holes near the top, and the 79-80 supports have an oval hole behind the headlight, requiring a different bucket. You can use a 79-80 support and buckets if it had round headlights, but I think the lights stick out a little further than the 72-76s.

Here's a 77-78. Notice the pigtails above and inboard of the headlights.

All 79-80s were the same. Only the headlight buckets changed depending on if it had dual or quad headlights.

Thanks 69hemigtx.

That's what I was afraid of. Now gotta search for another one.

340- what frame braces can I use? I hear talk of one by the power steering?would that help?

Yes. Used mostly on 4Xs but I put 1 on my 2X shorty and you could feel the difference in the steering..

Mine cracked bad on the driver's side bottom on my black '76 shortbed 4x4. Looked like a battery had leaked years ago and rusted it out. Replaced it with a junkyard core support and been fine ever since. That truck has over 300,000 HARD miles on it, though...

JS

Keep in mind the Wiring has nothing to do with the radiator support. 77/78 can be used just the same. But as 69 mentioned the 79/80 Single round light support the lights Will protruded probably about an inch or so. I ran an 80 grill on my 76 for a bit and the lights looked odd as they were sucked in compared to the grill.
I don't recall seeing any cracks in any of my supports either.

My guess concerning the cracks is that the bottom cracked because of vibration or use on rough terrain and the top cracked because of loss of support from the bottom. The tops were repaired because they could be seen and reached easily, but since the source of the issue, the bottom cracks, hadn't been fixed, the top cracked again.

One of my mid 70s trucks was a field truck. Most of its life was spent hauling seed to the fields on one of the big milti farm farming operations around here. Because it was used mostly between farms, it seldom saw a paved road and usually bounced through the fields between the farms. On it, the area surrounding nearly every body mount was loaded with cracks. If the cracks hadn't been repaired, there were cracks near any structural joints or metal bends or metal folds in close proximity to the body mount cracks.

You would probably be surprised how much stuff moves around on a truck going down the highway, take one off the pavement and the movement multiplies quickly and becomes more violent, add some speed to the off road experience and the amount of movement goes off the charts, so to speak.

Most body mount areas with cracks I have seen are more apparent in 4x4 or rough service trucks. Gene

Dad had a '72. The frame/core support flexed once when he pulled in my Grndfather's driveway once(*uphill) and the fan caught the radiater. After my Grandfather braced the frame,he wrote Chrysler about his mods, and they replied they were aware and had done their own mods on the newer years.

Back when these were new, there was a recall on the rad supports, we replaced a bunch of them at 63436.

But I do seem to remember that it was just the 4wd trucks.

Of course, in Vermont that is pretty much all we sold, sooo ...

The new ones were reinforced at the mounting locations.

I had a long bed '76 Club Cab that I dropped a (stock) 440 into. That sucker had cracks everywhere BUT the core support.

Matter of fact, it was the ONLY reason I got rid of the truck. Truck had very minimal rust, frame was solid, no rust pitting on it. Yet, by the time I got rid of it, a majority of the factory riveted in cross members were LOOSE. A few back under the bed you could move around by hand, and the main (front) suspension piece, you could tell it was moving around.

But, my truck had well over 300K miles on the chassis.

Even the leaf springs started to fail because of the mileage. Cruising down the freeway one day (no load in the bed), I hit a slight dip in the road, and heard a 'snap'. Every time I'd hit a bump after that, I'd hear a clang. A leaf had broke clean thru about mid pack and turned sideways so that it was slapping the frame with each bump.

Hmm, I'll have to inspect my 72 W200

Your 72 rad support is the first version used on early production trucks only. Part way into 72 production the rad supports received a heavy stamped reinforcement from end to end. Then through the years up to 93 there were many revisions with the late rad supports having additional reinforcements layered one on top of another to help prevent cracking.
As for the 72-76 rad supports, they all interchange but watch for the rad support mount areas. Some used the outboard holes like yours and some used the inboard holes.
And there are narrow rad and wide rad versions. Yours is the wide rad model.
The reinforced rad supports help up well

20 years ago I fixed many 80-96 Ford truck rad supports. All the loggers used them here and they cracked into pieces.

Got a core support from a member. Thanks azmopar



Ok, so 77 is out. Got a 77(?) support from a member here, and the radiator bracketry/opening is just a tad bit smaller. Also needs a hole drilled behind each turn signal.

I can make it work, but hoping for a bolt in. I'm still on the hunt otherwise I'll have to

My green '72 was cracked all over and looked like it had been brazed up very early in life.