Running a Honda radiator? [Merged 7-9] half scirocco afco smaller

[91-gsx]

i just had an idea of running an aftermarket honda civic radiator along with a spal fan. the reason i wanted to do this is because the front of the car will then not have a thing blocking air from geting into the engine bay. the radiator is 2 inches thick, and is made of aluminum. i was thinking of using the empty sapce for a few things; lowering the temps of the engine bay while moving from air directly hitting the turbo and engine block. i can route a 90* bend towards the front of the car for an intake, as big as i want sense i am not limited by the sidemount position. and last but not least, i can fit a bigger turbo in the front of the car without worrying about contact with the radiator or fans. now this mod might be good for some people with pretty big turbos, im not one just yet, but i will be in the near future. i just wanted to know what you guys think of this idea, good/bad sides.
thanks for your thoughts

 

[larsrya8]

How big of a turbo are you trying to run? Some guys on the DSMLink forums are running full T4's without too many fitment issues. How big of an intake are you planning on running? You can keep the engine bay cooler with a "vented hood".

My guess is that going smaller with your radiator is going to cause you to overheat, but I haven't tried it. Maybe someone else can guide you with some firsthand experience.

 

[fourreGsixty3]

I would say dont do it. You can run large turbo's without fitment issues, and if you do, it would only be with the fans, and then you can get pusher style fans on the outside of your radiator, and you get a few more inches of clearence. I would think that too cool of air hitting the exhaust manifold area, would cool down the EGTs, not a large amount but cooler EGTs slower spool time. Just my thoughts on the situation, because sometimes too much of a good thing(cold air) is a bad thing, I doubt on a smaller turbo on a 2.0 the spool time would be very minimal, but if you are thinking of a turbo, that might have clearance issues, Im guessing it will have a bad nasty amount of lag time, and the cooler EGTs will only slow this down more, this might be a great thing to do for hot days at the track, that is if the smaller radiator has no problem cooling down the engine that you are putting all this power through.

Dustin

 

[SBstar]

There are many people who have run these and they seem to work well. I suggest using some water wetter to make sure you keep temps down but other then that they work well. Your current setup may not demand for it quite yet but I don't think it would truly hurt spool up or things like that. I saw several people running them at the shootout (Darryl Hudson, Joe Bucci, etc...)

 

[4pistons]

i wanted to do this because the front of the car will then not have a thing blocking air from geting into the engine bay

I don't get it... If it's not mounted in front where is it?

I could see moving the radiator to have room for a monster intercooler but there is no gain to just let in cool air.

Rick - '91 GSX

 

[JOEY A]

Hondas also have a ALUM block and we have a Iron so we would need the extra cooling on the street. This is just a geuss, but it would make sense correct me if im wrong?

 

[MyBeatGSX]

Hold on a second and lets take a look at whats about to happen here....

You going to cut the size of your radiator in HALF, to try to cool the engine down.

 

[fourreGsixty3]

Well most honda Rads. are half as long as ours but much thicker, so it going to be close, but I would imagine it wouldn't be great for on the street, maybe ok, but not great.

I don't get it... If it's not mounted in front where is it?

Its mounted up front, but it doesn't go all the way across the front, only about half way, I believe that is what he is talking about with letting in cooler air, it may help out a little but very minimal, like the temp in the engine bay will go down so your hoses wont be subjected to such harsh temps, the engine bay air charge will be lower so a few *s cooler air in the intake.

Dustin

 

[saiyansniper]

Honda radiators much thicker? Hmm, I've got an h23 prelude and the radiator is about the same size. I know a lot of the civic radiators are smaller but ehh, #### that. Seeing how easily these cars overheat, a smaller radiator on one fan is asking for trouble.

 

[fourreGsixty3]

I was more refering to the civic radiators, maybe I should have been more specific, but its Honda so what ever.

Dustin

 

[SBstar]

The aftermarket radiators are much thicker, but the stock civic radiators are very small and thin. I would not suggest using either for daily driving, but for the drag strip as I said before the civic sized aftermarket radiators seem to work well.

 

[Kevin Jewer]

I have not tried this personaly, but I thought I would add that EVO owners with certain turbo kits do run the half sized radiators (check AMS website for an example) to fit the turbo and are alledgedly ok for daily driving.

 

[krnbk2]

people can speculate all they want but unless you have actual proof that running a smaller/thicker radiator is going to cause overheating issues its just that... speculation.

My suggestion would be to find a used aftermarket honda radiator and try it out. I would also recommend some sort of coolant temp gauge that you can use to keep an eye on things. only than will you be able to confrim whether or not this setup would be good for daily driving.

 

[GSTeclipse]

Get a koyo or Fluidyne Honda Radiator a few of the guy's I know with dsm's and a evo use them on the street and have yet to have a problem !

Plus you don't plain on having ac right ? If so goahead and remove the condensor for that exra air flow to the radiator sure does help alot ......

 

[dnhieu]

Get a koyo or Fluidyne Honda Radiator a few of the guy's I know with dsm's and a evo use them on the street and have yet to have a problem !

Plus you don't plain on having ac right ? If so goahead and remove the condensor for that exra air flow to the radiator sure does help alot ......

yeah but do your friends have large front mount intercoolers blocking that tiny Honda radiator?

i see the good like this. lowering temps from (what i believe what causes our cars to run so hot) the turbo. make our blocks run cooler which should lower our coolant temps themselves...

the bads. smaller radiator means less cooling. your going to only have 1 cooling fan so thats gonna hurt temps ( i have to leave both fans on or it will get on the hot side). your doing all this work so more air can get to the engine bay to run a smaller radiator and i would think this would result in coolant temps to be near stock. do you honestly want to run your turbo in front of the car? i would imagion even with a filter that this would cause premature turbo failure and if your talking about putting in front you know its big so that also means $$$. also what are you going to do when you put a fmic on your car and it starts to over heat? how are you going to put a fmic on your car? seems like alot of custom work for nothing...

just some thoughts....

 

[Quasimondo]

Hold on a second and lets take a look at whats about to happen here....

You going to cut the size of your radiator in HALF, to try to cool the engine down.

It does seem like an absurd idea at first, but when I measured the dimensions of an aftermarket Honda radiator and the dimensions of a stock DSM radiator, I discovered that the aftermarket Honda radiator has a larger coolant capacity. You're only thinking of the width of the radiator, but you also have to keep in mind that most good aftermarket Honda radiators are 2-3 times thicker than a stock DSM radiator. It's not as crazy of an idea as it sounds.

My only recommendation is that if you do use a Honda radiator, make sure you use a quality cooling fan that can push lots of air since you'll be limited to only one fan to keep the coolant temps in check.

 

[4pistons]

His original post was...

the reason i wanted to do this is because the front of the car will then not have a thing blocking air from geting into the engine bay

And so it seems an aftermarket Honda radiator "should" be enough to cool the engine.

The question still remains, is it worth the trouble just to let air in the engine bay? I say NO, there's no measurable benefit.

If it were to fit a large turbo or intercooler then I'd say YES.

Rick - '91 GSX

 

[Zex4g63]

My original radiator developed a leak. So I was curious if the Honda one would work. Well it does. The car runs as cool if not a little cooler than before. The fan runs less. If you still have AC I don't think it will do it tho. Also if you roadrace I don't think it will work either. I used a single 14inch fan and the core of this radiator is only 1.75 because the seller didn't know how to read a ruler. The radiator cap had to be cut off for stock hood clearance and I welded a pin to the bottom which uses the factory radiators mounting point. I used the factory lower hose and just found a random hose for the top. The inlet and outlet on the Honda rad are smaller than the DSM hoses so I used a bushing made by dayco to take up the space. Here's a pic.

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[Defiant]

i just had an idea of running an aftermarket honda civic radiator along with a spal fan. the reason i wanted to do this is because the front of the car will then not have a thing blocking air from geting into the engine bay.

Air blowing across the engine won't cool as well as running the water from the cooling system through a radiator will.
DSMs run hot. Taking it easy the last mile before parking will reduce the engine bay temps some, as will running stock heat shields.

 

[4pistons]

How big of an opening do you have next to the rad now?

Here's what would work well. Move the rad over to the drivers side. Mount as big a top-to-bottom intercooler as you can next to it, inlet on the bottom, outlet at the top, and you'd have very short and direct IC piping.

Rick - '91 GSX

 

[MyBeatGSX]

It does seem like an absurd idea at first, but when I measured the dimensions of an aftermarket Honda radiator and the dimensions of a stock DSM radiator, I discovered that the aftermarket Honda radiator has a larger coolant capacity. You're only thinking of the width of the radiator, but you also have to keep in mind that most good aftermarket Honda radiators are 2-3 times thicker than a stock DSM radiator. It's not as crazy of an idea as it sounds.

My only recommendation is that if you do use a Honda radiator, make sure you use a quality cooling fan that can push lots of air since you'll be limited to only one fan to keep the coolant temps in check.

But also keep in mind that thicker cores don't cool as well as a thiner core with more frontal surface area.

I've run aftermarket radiators on my Civics and I find it hard to believe they have more coolant capacity than a stock 2G radiator. What did you use for dimensions?

Also, like Defiant said. You're degrading your cooling system just to blow air at the engine... why? If you want to run cooler, upgrade the cooling system, don't downgrade it.

 

[fourreGsixty3]

Rick how do you expect the radiator hoses to run? The intercooler piping might be shorter, and more direct,m but the radiator hoses will be long, and running near the exhast manifold, and without proper bracing they will flop around, Im all about it looking clean under the engine bay, and having to long ass radiator hoses to make the UICP shorter doesnt justify the means in my mind.
EDIT: Nicely stated Tyler.

Dustin

 

[VapedTalon]

Zex's setup looks very interesting. Maybe I am wrong but if you were to mount the intercooler beside the aftermarket honda rad would this not keep at least stock cooling capacity. I mean really how efficiantly is the stock rad working when you have an A/C and a big frontmount? You guys are talking about a thicker rad cooling less efficiantly but how many inches are you adding to your stock rad when you stick your front mount intercooler in front of your rad and A/C.

As far as having longer rad hoses it looks to me as if they would be shorter. Though I think you were on the lines of it being on the opposite side to provide more room for the turbo. The radiator definatly would have to be mounted on the passenger side as zex has it for this to be viable. I say this because if you wanted to mount an intercooler beside it then the piping would be on the opposite side. Mounting an intercooler in the regular frontmount location would seem to be working against performing this mod in the first place.

In theory if you were to go with a setup with the Honda aftermarket rad (such as something from fluidyne, which are very nice by the way) and a custom intercooler mounted beside it, with no A/C, that you would end up with better cooling capacity then a stock rad with A/C and a frontmount. It would also be more efficient if you left the heat shields in place as most dsmers seem to not like to do. This would make for a good street setup with the added benifit of being sleeper style. However I do not believe this would work well for a track car because the smaller rad would most likely heat soak after repeated hard laps. For something such as autocross or drag I can't forsee it being a problem though. My only other concern would be how the intercooler pipe would be routed to the intake manifold.

Looks to me as if this could work fairly well. It just seems as 91 - gsx was looking at it the wrong way or did not explain it as he ment it.

 

[fourreGsixty3]

As far as having longer rad hoses it looks to me as if they would be shorter.

I was referring to Rick's thought of putting the rad. on the driverside, the hose would be shorter as shown in Zex's pic if it were on the pass. side.

It would also be more efficient if you left the heat shields in place as most dsmers seem to not like to do.

Not most only those that are running tubular headers(but most of them have the headers wrapped), and DSMers that are new to the see, or dont like the rusted look, but gain a new opinion on melted fan blades, which causes them to put them back on and buy new fan blades.

In theory if you were to go with a setup with the Honda aftermarket rad (such as something from fluidyne, which are very nice by the way) and a custom intercooler mounted beside it, with no A/C, that you would end up with better cooling capacity then a stock rad with A/C and a frontmount.

Yes the way you say makes sence, but who will spend a crap load of cash to custom do an FMIC that is the same size as a Supra SMIC? I point that Tyler was making was not including a/c on either set-up, and both FMICs were the same, the only changing variable is the Rad. from a Civic rad. to a DSM rad. You are taking away from front surface area when going from a DSM rad. to a Honda rad like Zex's. With a large FMIC in front of each the normal DSM rad. has more front surface to have more air go through it to cool, then the reduced front surface area on the Honda rad., this creates a much smaller surface for the air to get to through the FMIC., and cool a very hot engine.

Dustin

 

[Tom N]

There are many people who have run these and they seem to work well. I suggest using some water wetter to make sure you keep temps down but other then that they work well. Your current setup may not demand for it quite yet but I don't think it would truly hurt spool up or things like that. I saw several people running them at the shootout (Darryl Hudson, Joe Bucci, etc...)

Not sure about Darryl but Joe Bucci uses the same radiator as I use.
Its a Griffin Scirocco radiator from Summit.
Griffin Radiator