i don't have any over heating issues and i didn't use a block off plate.

 

Cheap header wrap costs all of $25 from fleabay, and works great. Honestly if you can't afford $75 for a real fan, let alone $25 for wrap, you shouldn't be driving a turbo car. What would you do if disaster struck your motor or turbo??


Back to the rads, you have to understand radiators and air-air intercoolers are very different. One has internal fins, the other has a far more efficient temp transfer medium. If you have a crap fan like 90% of the people here, the extra fin density may hurt rather than help. The truth is that most of the battle is with radiant heat and airflow, not the radiator itself. If your manifold/turbo dump heat directly into the radiator, or can't flow air through (or over to) the radiator, you won't have a snowball's chance in hell of removing any heat from the coolant.


PS aluminum IS a good conductor of heat, just not the best. You can easily overcome its 30% handycap over copper with >30% more surface area, which incidently still weighs less. Copper is 3.3x as dense as aluminum...

 

i disagree with that statement, my car was only getting hot above 70mph on the highway (b16 5th gear over 4000rpm)

i installed my spal fan/shroud with the cx racing radiator that was in it before and all cooling problems were solved, that proves the fan/shroud works at speeds over 50mph

 

my temp is a constant 210-220*F highway or city driving with a 1 7/8" aluminum half rad. i need to get more air flow to the rad because if i leave my fan on always in city the temps will drop below 200*F but on highway it plays around 215*F. doesn't help that my fan turns on at 216*F. im going to make a block off plate with a new ECT switch and see where that brings me. im also very interested in heat wrapping at least my downpipe for starters. btw thats without hitting boost.

 

listening to some of you guys that have major overheating issues like hi profile said, more than likely you have an airflow issue. with my beat up fluidyne i didnt get about 186-188 cruising. I drove the car 6hrs and not once did it get above 188. now the fan stayed on quit a bit but it didn't climb.

i've come to the conclusion that the best combo would be a good radiator with a good fan/shroud combo, but with the good radiator you must have good airflow. well with any radiator you need good airflow.

 

Update !

a good fan on a blah or decent radiator WITHOUT airflow WILL NOT cool an engine period. it will quickly creep and overheat.

My buddys car is running a good rad with a FAL fan in his car and it overheats on the highway. so we pinstalled some ducting to focus the air to the rad and it still eventually creeps to 220 when going over 70mph. were going to move the rad closer to the intercooler and block off all other areas to make sure 100% of the air flowing through the bumper makes it to the rad to keep it cool.

Large gaps between the intercooler and rad will cause overheating because the air takes path of least resistance which usually ends up going around the rad not through it. also blocking off the driverside in front of the turbo manifold will help big time in aiding the ait flow to the rad as well.

I will update this next week

 

good info, that is why i did this and people asked me why. you probably wont believe it but that's a shitty fan. fal sucks. with the mod i did and the fan combo i made will fix that. Now im upgrading IC's so we will see what i block

 

i had the same problems with a cxracing radiator and a cheap fan, installed shroud and 13" spal and NO MORE OVERHEATING AT ALL ANYWHERE!!

 

I had a Mishimoto half rad in my car h22 turbo with a slim ebay fan and I was overheating. Then I changed the rad to a Fluidyne half rad and a high performance spal fan 14" and now I have no problems. I also changed the fan switch

 

i have a mishimoto radiator and a cheap 12" pusher fan on my ek, and i haven't experienced one single issue as far as cooling. i guess that upper grille helps a lot.

 

I've got a Performance Radiator, (similar to radiators.com) a shop we use for factory replacements through work. It's a dual core copper with a black temp-coating on it, cost $105. I've got an Autozone 12'' electric fan placed in the puller position, costs about $43.

It's on a 94 Integra with an un-cut front bumper, and a 31x12 intercooler. I've got roughly 3'' of space between my intercooler and the radiator as they are mounted.

I have not seen temps of over 185 degrees on the street, even driving home yesterday in 103 degree heat. I think the hottest I've seen was 195 degrees on the dyno, and it was only requiring about 5-10 minutes between pulls to cool-down.

Proof that high-dollar cooling systems are not required inorder to keep things cool, the only thing I can summarize from it is that the copper radiator is bad ***, as the fan is nothing special and I'm not running anything other than simply coolant and water.

 

Ur gonna header wrap this beautiful header? [Dr. evil] hmmm yea roight[/dr. evil]


Its not necessarily that I dont have the money, but since I have the turbo kit I have, everything is custom one-off and even if I bought a shroud that "should" fit it prob wont, and I dont have a way to weld aluminum anymore. So fabbing is kinda out of the question. Besides it works 100% better than it did now with the full size radiator.

 

Hmm, does being pretty somehow help the vehicle perform better and in turn be more reliable? Heat is just about the arch enemy to any setup, most especially a boosted one. So while being pretty looks fantastic in pictures, it probably shouldn't matter in the least. Just my $.02 of course.

Besides, it'd match the valve cover.

 

Yeah wrapping that manifold would be in his best interest. Thats thing is massive and is probably creating some CRAZY underhood temps. My under hood temps are high and my manifold is barely exposed

 

Do you have the bumper support removed? I want to do something similar but was thinking that right on the flat part of the bumper would just expose the support. I was thinking about going up a bit closer to the hood.

 

Remove the support and cut the bumper to the shape of the opening already there. i did it on my hatch and it worked out great but i did it to expose the intercooler, if you dont have intercooler that big might look silly

 

i used a body saw and cut around the bumper support, mine works perfect. I placed a fan blower in that hole to simulate ram air from driving and i could feel the air blowing through the radiator and through the fan. So i know when i drive it's actually better.

 

What, my v/c not clean enough for a show car



Its an old pic, it looks just fine now ***

Besides thats why everything was ceramic coated. The original owner was trying to cut down on underhood heat some.

 

I haven't had an issue but I am adding the GE electric water pump, Tony1 did a test on a "street car" and it did great in Texas weather.

So i'm adding that to my setup as well, i think everyone should for a cure not a band-aide.

 

Now that i was actually able to datalog, i have some factual info:

My cooling setup is stock water pump, stock plumbing, mishimoto 1/2 rad, 10" push fan, 3" non-wrapped downpipe (probably 2 inches behind radiator), with a huge FMIC in front.

I have done multiple pulls, back to back, 2nd-4th gear, in 80* weather and it never got above 200*, as well as cruising and some pulls in 90*+, or hot lapping at the drag strip. I have never had a situation where it got above 200*. I will post some pics of the setup later.

 

Texas is a different ball game. I never got above 200 but I didn't drove it in the summer as well

 

i put a pwr half rad on my gsr and i noticed the temps have not changed, still waiting for kit to come in which is fully coated with HP black in and out. ill be running some water wetter in there like i do with the bike to help with the temps

 

I have a 1/2 wide aluminium radiator that I got from T1 and Tony put a shroud on the back side w/ a puller fan.
I drove around yesterday morning at 0730, on the freeway @53-58 mph with minimal boost for 30 minutes. The temp was prabably around 80 degrees outside.
It took 20 minutes to get up to 216 and it stayed there. The fan is wired on and I have a 750 percision FMIC. I have a failsafe thermostat installed and run 50/50 ethylene glycol/water.
I am thinking if I cut some holes in the bumper and in the front of the hood, right above the top of the intercooler where the radiator is taller behind it, to allow more flow directly to the radiator it will help. We shall see. Any other suggestions to get my ECT down. I do need to rap the down pipe and a heat shiel would be freat to. I'll have to get someone to fab me one.
What kind of temps are you guys with the 1/2 radiators running???

 

Your having the same typical problems most people have with 1/2 size radiators. Most of them are good, i have a PWR and i believe Tony uses Koyo. both good but the problem is air flow to the radiator. I'm in the same boat where i may have to cut holes and re-route air to the radiator. Without the turbo temps never went over 185 but with the intercooler there now blocking quite a bit of air it has become an issue. I just upgrades to a 14" fan which acts as a shroud for the radiator. The shroud only works when the fan kicks on it does nothing to help keep the radiator cool when the fan is off. One thing i did was reduce the fan temp activation through S300 but the only way to fix this is get more air do the radiator. I still have AC too (not willing to lose that in this cali heat) so after the air goes through the radiator it has to pass through the condenser as well then finally gets to the warm radiator.

 

Well, I just datalogged two 20 minute idles to see how and what the temp does.
I am taking to coolant temp readings. One is an autometer which its sensor is in the stock gauge sensor spot, and the ECT from my S300. They differ by less than two degrees.
First idle was with the hood closed and she hit 201 in 22 minutes. Looks loke the thermostat opened at 175 and reached 200 in about 14 minutes.
Second idle was hood opened and it took her 40 seconds to come down 203 to 189. 4 min later at the 5 min mark of the 20 minute idle she hit 195 and held until 13.5 min marker. Thats because I shut the hood at the 11 minute mark. She stayed at 201 until about 18min mark where i built about 10psi for a sec, at which about the 19 min mark she hit 206.
She reached about 216 doing 55 mph with some 3-4 gear pulls over 30-45 minutes this morning, when it was still cool.
Lack of air flow has got to be the cause. I will post the rusults once I change things up by cutting holes, adding some sort of ducting or both.