as stated, i am replacing my radiator tonight, and all i have to go by is my haynes manual. anyone have any experience replacing the radiator??? i feel confindent doing it myself but didnt know if there any little things than can pop up that isnt in the haynes manual. the car is in my sig, the radiator is a reach OEM replacement (looks to be better than OEM quality). any help to avoid me wasting all night putting this thing in would be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance guys.

 

Just the obvious: drain the fluid, disconnect the connectors for the fans, remove upper/lower hose and remove upper radiator brackets—I leave the radiator and condenser fan attached to the radiator for removal, but that's up to you.

There's no trans cooler lines to disconnect, even though the new radiator will probably have nipples for a trans cooler, because you have a manual. If it takes longer than 30 minutes to replace, you need to sell your tools on ebay and take-on gardening or something.

 

If you are replacing the radiator, you might as well replace the upper and lower hoses - cheap insurance to prevent any type of leaks if they haven't been replaced already. Also, have you replaced your thermostat yet? Since you will have everything apart - might as well do that too.

 

everything went smooth, went and wrapped my headers and sprayed a thermal coating on the wrap, collector and catalytic converter, car drives much smoother now. anyone ever used reach radiators before??? i got it due to it having 33% more capacity than stock (or so i was told). i dont know how true that is cause the guy at the place i ordered it from didnt get the right one so they said they would give me the $169 reach radiator for the $129 OEM price