civic Aluminum radiator for the street!?

[98talonAWD]

OK.. i need a new radiator because my Full-Race manifold is in the way of the coolant connection on the top. sooo.. i was wondering if i could run a civic crx or some small aluminum radiator( i.e.. koyo, fluidyne, or something like that). I know i have to fabricate, but as you'll probably look at my mods profile, im not affraid to change things around.

my only concern would be driving it around on the streets cruizin for 3-4 hours straight.. i dont want it to overheat or anything. i have seen a few cars do this, but they dont drive on the street a lot.

Nate from SBR said it should be ok and that he didnt see a problem with it, but i wanted to know if anyboyd has tried this before.

My motor should put out around 700+whp at around 35+psi or so. so cooling the bi*** is a MAJOR issue.

Thanks guys

 

[jott5555]

I think it would be prefect for track use. but on the street there is a reason the radiator is the size it is.. you may be able ot pull it off if you used it with a very high cfm shrouded fan.

 

[BOOSTING_GST]

Hey wuz up I almost had the same problem as you did but I dont have as much mods as you do. I bought a SRT-4 front mount and my buddy didnt want to cut the end tanks off to make it fit properly so what we did looked around at a radiator shop in a magazine that they had and tried to match up the radiator inlet and outlets. What we found was that a 90 golf radiator would be almost the same so i ordered it. Just had to go to the junk yard to find the sensor for the fans to kick on. I forgot the name of it. Well any ways i put it on and it was fine till it got a lil hotter out side. The stock fan would not cool down the radiator. I then went ahead and ordered some flex a lite fans. Car runs fine and cools down fine no prob what so ever... Good luck in your seach...

 

[98talonAWD]

well.. i do have a slim-line 14" fan.. flows upwards of 1360cfm.

should damn near cool anything i could ever want.

My car is mostly designed for drag racing.. i.e welded center diff, soon to be twin disc exedy kevlar clutch. but i do love to drive it on the street and scare the hell out of the old school muscle cars.

i am also gonna use water wetter or another additive to help cool the motor down.

Also everything is ceramic coated( intercooler pipes, header, turbine housing, o2 housing, 4" exhaust.. everything.

 

[BOOSTING_GST]

I also used water wetter before I changed the radiator but i did not change a damn thing. but them flex a lite fans really work. i have the lil twin ones for the same moded radiator cost about 195 i think. but hey i rather pay 195. than to purchase a new motor

 

[boostedinaz]

Why not get a 1G radiator? The neck for that is off to the side not in the middle. It would drop right in and all you would need is a new upper radiator hose.

 

[ltho98]

As if DSM's don't have enough of a problem with overheating. I've honestly never seen this done before, however what has to be done-- has to be done.

These are the steps (in order of prescedence) i would do to ensure adequate cooling:

a.) Run water wetter

b.) If you have coolant lines going into your turbocharger-- bypass them now. The turbo is a HUGE head load on the cooling system. After you bypass the cooling lines going into your turbo, it is a good idea to run an external oil cooler. This is performed by using a 90 oil filter housing and oil cooler.

c.) If you can get away with using stock fans-- do so. The depth of the shroud is what pulls air. Slimlines even with the highest flow rates can't seem to match for some reason.

d.) Kiss your AC condenser good bye.

If this doesn't cool it with a civic radiator, than you're SOL in my opinion. However, i do believe that steps a and b should take care of it all.

 

[jott5555]

you can run a stock turbo without water cooling lines? if you add in a oil cooler where did you get this info??

 

[ltho98]

well, for one, he isn't running a stock turbo. He's running a T67.

You can run a turbo without the water lines as long as you have a good oil cooler, it will just depreciate the life of the turbo. But by how much? I have no idea. Just be sure to turbo time it adequately.

But for two, i've ran my 16G without water lines and it was on the car a nice healthy year before i sold it for an rs49, which i'm also not running water lines through that has no problems either.

Regardless, the best solution to my overheating problem is bypassing coolant lines into the turbo.

Got this info from Nabr