Ok so I was at a local rotary meet yesterday and this guy rolled up in an 86 Sport I think. Under the hood I noticed that his coolant reservoir was mounted on the driver side fender area instead of in the front of the car. Someone at the meet told me that only '86 models are like this. I've never noticed another car with it mounted like that; mine is an 88 GTU with the reservoir at the front of the car near the bumper.

Did all 86 models have the coolant reservoir on the driver side fender? Why did Mazda move it? I presume it was because the front of the engine bay is cooler.

 

My 86 base has it in front like most other 7's. idk why they did that though.

 

some are different for some reason, it over by the battery, i dont have that one though, mine is in its usual spot as well

 

the coolant reservoir is in the front in my 86.

 

IIRC Canadian models were equipped with the overflow tank on the fenderwell.

Hopefully Icemark will see this thread and make corrections as needed.

 

i believe it was the 86-86.5 that they did that with, then changed it, probably to make it over flow cleaner under the bumper intead of fenderwell, or to keep for possibly slipping a rear tire in the coolant

 

thwe 86 -86.5 have a lot of qiorks like a taller center armrest and different headlight relays and ****. just stuff mazda chose to tweak change. **** the overflow thing may have been purly cosmetic changed just to look better

 

most of the configurations were dependent on Koyo not Mazda it appears, i have seen many different radiators over the years and all were stock factory equipped koyos with variances, i believe the question should be to ask koyo why they changed so much over the years vs asking mazda why they redid the cooling system in so many different ways.

 

There was some early coil failure issues when the overflow tank was next to the drivers shock tower on the 86 models.

that is why it got switched.

 

damn ice! did you work for mazda? i mean off the top of your head you know the history of almost every part and ****. wtf?

 

Ummm, if I have mine over there should I change it up?

I never liked the fact that the hose was ~272ft long going from the filler neck to the resorvoir. It's also way to close to some belts.

 

^^ He knows random Mazda designer people in California

 

No, just know the stuff from owning them.

Remember the first FC I owned I bought new at the dealer back in late 86.

And I worked on FC's since they first showed up.

In fact I fixed a intermittent dieing issue on one of the first Turbos that were available on the west coast, when three different Mazda dealers couldn't figure it out and were replacing the CAS and ECU and everything else on almost a weekly basis.

See, Mazda dealer "mechanics" were clueless back in the day too.

 

No point; unless you are having leading coil failures.

 

Alright. I'm fine then. What exactly causes the problem?

 

On the fender is better imho, no need for a radiator cooling panel thingy, the front of the car where it usually is is completely sealed off stock.

 

my 86 gxl has it over on the driver's side near the battery.