Reply to "installing new water tanks"

Re the 'aim' of the upper water pipe being off: I've seen this li'l problem surface on more than one vendor's upper pipe assembly. The angle needed to line up with the tank inlet will depend a lot on engine placement; if your car allows a big-cap distributor, the set-back of that engine will necessarily be different than another car in which there's no room for a big-cap distributor. So the water-pipe angle changes. A simpler solution to cutting, welding and re-polishing the pipe might be to drill multiple mount hoses in the tank brackets, as engine height won't change, only fore-and-aft placement. But this fix will depend on the design of each vendor's mount bracket. Maybe an 'adapter bracket' between main bracket & body, as seems to be shown in one photo, would work?