I was trying to replace a defective slave cylinder and I discovered that one of the threads on the transmission housing is completely fu--ed and will require tapping. (the vibration screwed the cylinder out of alignment and was creating havoc during shifting..) That damn bee hive oil cooler has to come out...Who in the hell designed that piece of garbage??My 81 had a real air cooled radiator that worked great..I can't believe for a second that thing is better..Anyway- because i'm going to remove that thing to tap the new threads I'd like to swap back to an old fashioned cooler..Anyone done this before? Does the oil filter tower have to be replaced as well? Any advice would be helpful..

And oh yeah..If anyone has an older style oil cooler and mounts please let me know!

 

yea, its pretty easy to swap. You'll need the shorter radiator, the cooler, cooler mounts, oil lines, the filter pedastal, and the hard water line that goes from teh rad to the heater (along passenger side of bay). All that stuff has to come from a 79-82 car. The only thing that requires some "custom" work is the "T" shaped water jacket coming out of the engine right under the beehive, you can either cut the T part off, leaving a straight pipe, or simply plug one of the outlets.
If you need any pics i can take some, i did this on my 83 S, and am about to do it again on the 83 GS, so I can take "during" pics if anyone wants.
hope that helped.

 

Thanks- Seems pretty straight forward, just need to locate all the parts. The only question I have- Is the beehive cooler worth a damn?

 

I just did this too, and that beehive cooler is a complete piece of ****. Dont even bother with it.

That being said, when I swaped my oilcooler in I ran into some problems. My car is an 85 GS, so it has the mounts for the GSL-SE oil cooler, so I thought I would adapt my FC oil coooler to fit.

Well with AC in there its completely impossible. I ended up having to mount it is he front of the car, and make My own oil cooler bracket and lines. It looks pretty good though now.

 

The beehive is a worthless chunk of garbage. Its totally useless, after I took mine out I beat it with a sledgehammer. If you get the 79-82 style cooler and rad, etc it will be a bolt in like i said, but if you get a FC cooler (also a air type) you will need to custom make braketry and lines. Unless your running a lot of HP, that would be a waste of time. Finding the parts wont be that hard, I found two setups relatively easily. The whole swap could be done for $100 or less if you do the bare essentials. My coolant hoses were ****, so I replaced those, and went wiht braided SS lines for the cooler, so it cost me more.

 

Is it just as straight forward on my 85 GS? I have been needing to do this for a long time.

 

I wouldn't go as far as to say that the beehive is junk.

It does the job just fine, and has less parts (I.E. O rings) to go bad, and cause leaks.

I believe I remember some of the guys with the higher horsepower cars saying that they still use the beehive, and it works perfectly fine.

 

what are you talking about? The beehive oil cooler is known for leaks, and it has 4 o rings, whereas the pedistal used ond an air to oil cooler only has two.

Also the 79-82 oil cooler will only be a bolt in if you use the 79-82 style radiator (3 row VS. 2 row.)

I've heard stories on this forum about that behive oil cooler heating up the oil rather than cooling it. Not sure if its true or not, but it made an interesting story to tell my friends when I got rid of mine.

The only reason why I used an FC oil cooler rather than a GSL-SE or 79-82 one is because the FC one was just flat out given to me.

 

yea seriously, its the worst design ever, it does basically nothing in the way of cooling. Theres a reason teh 83-85 (non SE) cars are known for dowl o ring failure, its because they run much hotter than the earlier ones due to this pos.
Yes, hornbm, your right about having to switch radiators, sorry if i wasn't clear on that.
and yes, swapping onto a 85 GS is the same as putting it on a 83 or 84.

 

oh yea, one more thing to say to you guys who plan to do this, especially on a daily driver. Give yourselves pleny of time to do this (in case something goes wrong)
If you only have weekends free or something and it must be done in a short period of time be damn sure all the stuff works and doesn't leak. I had a month of christmas break to do it, but being a moron waited untill i only had 4 days left before school to start working on it. Anyway, long story short I found out the hard way my oil cooler had a leak, and it was a mad dash to get it welded up and back together before school started. Anyway, thats about all I have for now. Good luck

 

Heres a hella long thread about my oil cooler swap, if youre interested...

https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showth...hreadid=150124

~T.J.

 

Thanks for the info. I do plan on modding the engine a little bit for now (45 Weber and RB dual exh) until I can figure out if I want a SP 12A or 13B..SO I will be concerned (to some degree) about the oil coolers capacity. I figured while I have the damn beehive out to repair the slave cylinder, it would be as good a time as any to do the swap. It just looks like a completely inefficient design to me, cooling area, location etc.. Luckily this is a weekend fair weather car so I don't need to rush. (BTW- just removing that 24mm bolt for the beehive looks like a royal PITA and a knuckle buster too boot.) Anyone with spare parts please let me know!

 

If your talking about the banjo bolt on the back of the cooler holding the line on its 23mm, the only reason i said that is in case you have to go buy tools for this project (I didn't have a wrench that big in my set) Its not too bad if you loosen it before removing anything else. As long as the cooler is still held in place you can lossen it (from under the car with a wrench) Other tools you will need and might not have are a 21mm wrench and socket, as well as a 26mm wrench (I just used an adjustable) Other than that the rest is 10mm and 12mm stuff. A long socket extention will help get the 12mm bolt that holds the cooler to the housing out. ok I'll shutup now

 

Where does the 26mm come into play? I must not have seen that one.

 

The lines for the air oil cooler have 26mm fittings. Thats why you didn't see anything that big

 

I've got a 23mm wrench. It's so nice to use on banjo bolts. Now I just need a 26 and 22mm wrenches.

 

Hmm, big PITA banjo bolts, near useless oil cooler..I really appreciate everyones advice..My last word on this beehive removal thing....SAWZALL TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

sounds like i need to do the same... as my car is running hot as it is... anyone have an extra cooler, and pedastool they want to give me?... i will keep my eye's peeled for one, as i think i really need it.
jeff

btw, RotorMotorDriver, excelent writeup.... nice to see that you told about the snags, as well as how you went about it... makes for a much more realistic mod.

 

Hey thanks! I try to tell about the mistakes and how I fixed them just becase Im the kinda person that tries to apply what I read to my own situation. So if I had read my write up without the part about the mounts being too short, I would probably think "hey, why not make them shorter?", which as we all know now, wont work with the fittings I had. So by including the mistakes I think its better because Im showing why it wont work like that, and saving headache for people later if they tried to do it like that when I already know it wont work. Hopefully that made sense, lol.

~T.J.