How dumb is this?

I recently purchased (last Friday) a 94 LSI from the local Subie dealer. Part of my deal included the dealer painting the hood and front bumper, the rest of the paint is excellent. While busy (and happily) waxing the exterior I made my way to the front air dam. My happiness soon turned to disbelief as I stared at what seemed to be a large amount of overspray on the rad...or worse the tranny cooler! My only real concern about the car since I started reading about it a couple of months back has been the transmission cooling problems. I had the dealer install synthetic fluid before I took the car. Have a look at the attached pic and tell me how dumb this is. I have driven the car with this in place for about 500 miles...some hard miles too. The fins appear to be bent...do I need to be concerned about this? Should I just be glad I found it or could bad things have taken place already in the tranny? More stunning pics of stupidity are in my locker.

I can't tell from the pic but isn't that something "crammed" inside between the grill and radiator/cooler elements?




Randy (Going to look at locker pix) ii

Yep that would be newspaper...I have yanked it all out now....like I said...how dumb is that?

At least it was "pretty blue" newspaper.


Randy (Was it the Sunday comics?) ii

Originally posted by AJAX
My happiness soon turned to disbelief as I stared at what seemed to be a large amount of overspray on the rad...or worse the tranny cooler! My only real concern about the car since I started reading about it a couple of months back has been the transmission cooling problems. I had the dealer install synthetic fluid before I took the car. Have a look at the attached pic and tell me how dumb this is. I have driven the car with this in place for about 500 miles...some hard miles too. The fins appear to be bent...do I need to be concerned about this? Should I just be glad I found it or could bad things have taken place already in the tranny? More stunning pics of stupidity are in my locker.

Looks like the bodyshop forgot to remove the masking paper in there to protect the condenser/cooler/rad from overspray.

Agreed...it was masking paper...I guess its no big deal but Im glad I found it before it started a fire or overheated the tranny fluid!