A tale of two rigs
I had a 1977 Toyota Corolla, a stripped down little econobox with a lawnmower engine in it. The thing was so utterly simple that it even had a manual choke, and had never had a radio installed. I could do virtually any repairs to it I needed to.

One night as I was driving home through the mountains I hit a deer (a story in itself) and cracked the radiator. I managed to get home, but the radiator had to be replaced. The car parts store wanted $120 for a new one, which was out of my range at the time. But I knew an old guy who had a junkyard with several Corollas in it, and he agreed to let me have a radiator for $20 if I took it out myself.

So out I go, wrenches in hand, and carefully remove the radiator from a car very similar to mine. Only thing was, the fan on that one was mounted on the flywheel where mine was a separate electric fan with a thermostat.

I took it home and installed it, then attached some wood strips around it to screw the fan assembly into. Wallah, it's mounted! Only what do I do with its sensor? There's no place in this radiator to put it.

I ran a length of speaker wire through the firewall and installed a light switch of the sort that's normally in a wall in the space where the radio should have gone. If the engine got warm, I'd flip the switch.

The guy I ultimately sold it to drove it that way for two more years.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 10 Mar 2011, 16:36, 2 replies)

That's the most imaginative spelling of that particular word I've ever seen
and, while you technically still got it wrong, I'm going to give you a million bonus points for at least not writing the name of a fecking string instrument.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 18:19, closed)

Heh.
Yes, I do know that it's properly voila, but I was channeling my inner redneck.

Though in defense, Pepe LePew used to pronounce it "Viola!" See for yourself: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lsQfTaStcs
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 10 Mar 2011, 19:04, closed)

That was a common 'fix' on old Vauxhalls
The electric fan switches used to break, and on the lower spec models, there were a lot of blanked off switch panels where the expensive variants had their electric window switches and the like. So a quick trip to the scrappy and a switch was procured, and the rest was as you describe. Very effective too, so long as the temperature gauge wasn't equally buggered.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 20:24, closed)