Thread: My radiator thread. Project Tight Fit complete!

Do you have SOLID front dogbone mount? Looks like your motor mounts are loose if your motor is moving that much..

Yes, I have a solid front dog bone. The motor still has movement because the rear is just a solid urethane mount. With the amount of torque the engine produces it has a hard time coping with it. the solid front mount is great. The rear one however, should prob be solid at this point lol.

Hey, the Toyota matrix radiator is a tad shorter than ours. It ahold fit in tight spots. I'm test fitting one tomorrow to get rid of my civic one.

Like so?




Jeremy I love your car and have mad respect for you bro, BUT I totally 100% disagree dude, thats just a silly statement. There are tons of dd's, and track cars that run civic half sized rads and are just fine. You need to worry about keeping the heat under control under your hood bro.Get a decent ebay aluminum half size radiator, a lower temp thermostat, a cooling plate to direct airflow, header wrap the mani and the downpipe and if your feeling really frisky water wetter or take out the thermostat all together in the summer time. My old t67 teg was over 500 hp and it was fine on the BONE stock civic half sized rad.



Indeed.

I'd personally not like to take away from the structural integrity of my car by cutting that rad support. Not my cup of tea. JMHO. To each their own I suppose.

Have you ever done a track day at a road course? That said have you done enough track days to push the car hard? 30 minutes of non-stop full throttle, break, turn, full throttle is HELL on all systems, especially coolant systems. Turbo SR's NEED the full size radiator, the thicker core DOES NOT offset or replace good old surface area.

Additionally you cannot compare what works on a Honda motor to what works on a Nissan motor as the cooling systems are totally different...

The car doesn't have issues overheating on the strip, or even high boost on the street except when I am railing on it for 20min at a time. My old radiator is 1 1/16" thick core, full size, with a denser fin pack. It is more efficient than the NX or Nismo radiator. But it would still run too hot.

I cut holes in my hood. Run a colder thermostat. Wrapped the header in heat wrap, but didn't do the dp because it is regular steel and I didn't want it to rust away. But it still isn't enough when the car is pushed hard.

I will be trying a Evo style hood maybe in the future, as well as the larger radiator. But I honestly don't see how a civic radiator is going to work when I'm at MMP on high boost. The SR is going to be running pretty hot unless I have a good bump in cooling capacity.

As far as the structural support of the upper rad support... I don't think it is really important. The reason being, is the steel used in that part of the support is very thin and flimsy. Seems like it's only there for the hood latch, and it is in an area which won't see any real flexing. A nice stiff FSTB should remedy any flex issues, though I did plan on putting something together there. I might even use the stock piece, slightly modified, and bolted in place.

i want to run a half radiator from a civic, but that so i can have the other half for the air-water-I/C radiator

Yes, I have done track days and no a honda and a nissan have different cooling systems. But basic common sense logic applies.

If HIGH hp BMW's, Evo's, Sti's, Miatas, Mustangs even GTO's can run a civic half sized radiator on the track why can't you? Some of these cars have 2x the displacement and are iron blocked as well. And if high HP and iron blocks don't make massive heat I"m not sure what does.

Get a better water pump, run water wetter, take out the t-stat completely, and control the ambient heat under the hood..... (ie wrap the down pipe, wrap the coolant pipes even get a turbo blanket, a HIGHER cfm fan ect ect) If you're that worried about rust then coat the dp in ceramic, which is cheap and THEN header wrap it. They even make special coatings for intercoolers and radiators that increase surface area and help cool 30% better. All very cheap options.

I RESPECT the shit outa you Jeremy. You're a cool dude, but you are WAY over thinking this cooling shit bro. This isn't fucking rocket science. People have been cooling pos high hp, iron block and iron headed cars for years.

I will bet a million bucks and my car that if you do all those things there will be no more heating issues, high boost, low boost, dd, track car or driving through hell and back yada yada yada blah blah blah. Even with a half sized or even a stock sized radiator.

I'm not trying to be a douche at all it's JMHO.

Another thing you might want to do is loop the coolant lines that go to the throttle body. Your car will take longer to warm up but it will run cooler.

For the holes in the hood there is only so much you can due until you start seeing diminishing returns with lift/drag/your hood getting lifted off the car. I cut a hole and ran streamers across the hole from above the radiator to the valve cover, on a grate/fins to see where the most air flow was going (This was with a boxed in rad and undertray that went to the motor) Most air came up and out the width of the radiator and six inches in between the VC and the radiator. I tried it a few different ways closing the hole from different parts and that same 6 inches seemed to be the sweet spot.

So you are talking about drag racing right?....If not you don't know what you are talking about. I had a ebay core that was the same thickness as the civic half sized but with full width. I had no problem over heating that on the street in summer weather.