Gadd

And I don't think those were designed to take 110 psi of oil pressure.

airborne

So I put the headlights on but the black shroud hits the rads. I have a spare set so I cut the bottom part off and it fits fine. It'll be good for airflow with the lights up, but is there a serious negative here? Only things i can think of is aero and maybe some water will get in. Not a big deal.

dubulup

can't think of any negatives...go for a cruise yet?

airborne

no, unfortunately -you? i just started getting the undertrays back on last night. i'm also going to install the 2 gauges first. hopefully this weekend -got a 5 day for the holiday.

airborne

Took the car out on the road for the first time this weekend. With everything put together coolant temps stayed at 91c. I think slotting or replacing the wheel well on the one side will help. On the passenger side the fan blows out but on the driver side the wheel well is directly behind it.

Just got my oil press/temp gauges installed this weekend so next time I take it out I'll have that info.

The only two problems on the 25mph trip around the neighborhood were a rub on the passenger side at full lock and a wobbling noise/feel. The rub was just part of the wheel well that wasn't secured, easy fix. The wobbling I hope is some temporary flat spotting that can be driven out. Also, the tires were all down 5-7lbs.

Besides that i just have to get the one side marker bulb to fit and then get it inspected. Cops don't have a lot of leniency for cars 3 months overdue on inspection around here. i know.

airborne

So anyway, everything was working great. Got the car inspected, oil temps/press fine, cooling fine w/no ducting yet in the nose. But the rub on the passenger side was my plugged up hose I used to close one of the rads unused outlets. It rubbed too much on the way back from inspection and split. No problem.

So I took the rad out and used JB weld to plug the outlets. Checked that it still flowed fine and reinstalled. Here's my problem.

With the front of the car up on stands I filled the system until the TB line spewed coolant. Then I ran the car with the lisle tool attached to the filler neck. It ran fine, got some bubbles then nothing. Shut it off, capped the filler neck and restarted. Everything ran normal but no hot coolant is coming out of the engine. The flexible stainless steel hose I'm using didn't get hot right near the outlet. So the car started to heat up and I shut down. I heard some water moving noises at that point and the 1st rad got hot. Figured something good happened and restarted but with the same result.

So wtf? It was working fine, jacked up the car R&R the rad, and no luck. Is something funky going on because the car is jacked up? I ran out of time and didn't run the heater or check the filler neck.

So if i put the car down and still have the same problem, any ideas? figure it's got to be the t-stat or pump right?

airborne

Turned out the car just needed to get some more air out. I've put 30 miles on the setup now and it seems to be working well.

In about 20 minutes of suburb driving on my commute when it was 65F out I saw:

The oil temp stayed below 180. Ummm, that's too cold actually.

The fans never turned on until I sat in the lot at work for a minute. Water temp never got over 190 and was as low as 185. When the fans came on while I was sitting in the parking lot they quickly knocked the temp down to 185.

The underhood temps got as low as 68. It was 72 in the car at that time.

Air intake temps topped out at 79. Compared to what I remember before all this, that is astounding. I was happy if the AITs were under 110. This is on the PFC with the sensor in the stock location.


On the way home it was 82F out and I saw the exact same numbers except the AIT got up to 105. Also, I ran it at 4k rpms in 2nd for a mile or so just to see what would happen and the oil temps got up to 210, but no other changes.

This is with no ducting at all in the nose, just the stock undertrays. I still need to make ducting and generally clean up the install.

airborne

Some pics:








Please ignore the poorly aligned headlight covers.

RTS3GEN

You need a GTC nose with larger inlet openings for your rads! Nice project!
Art

oo7arkman

iTrader: (2)

Congrats on finishing this monster of a project. It all looks really good!

cozmo kraemer

Congrats on getting it done!

Any plans to put something to block debris picked up by the tires, from impacting those radiators? I would be worried about them getting damaged, running around with them exposed like that.

airborne

wow, i totally missed these replies. thanks for the congrats and suggestions. bigger openings would definitely help air flow but it's probably not in the budget for a while. on the driver side I have cut out the rest of the wheel well behind the rad and added a layer of metal mesh covered by window screen. all quality HDR products. i'll take care of the other side eventually.

got a couple hundred miles on the setup and amazingly nothing has broke and i haven't had a single leak. the JB weld on the one rad is holding fine and the HELP! caps on the other rad are hanging in there.

i haven't even done any ducting yet though i picked up the aluminum and some hardware to start. temps have never been a problem and i thought i'd post an update since it's too cold out for any rigorous testing. and i'm sitting outside handing out halloween candy but there haven't been any kids in a while.

thanks again to everyone who threw out suggestions and shared their know how. i don't even have a workbench and the forum was invaluable to this project. especially since i got the idea from rallimike here.

airborne

What do you think of this? I just had my first real highway drive and my oil temps were around 165F on a 55deg day. Water temps were 180-185.

But is that too low for oil temps? I'm using 5w30 synthetic currently. The pressure is normal. I used a 180 deg mocal t-stat and oil definitely seems to be flowing correctly since the car doesn't explode or overheat.

dubulup

BIG UPS! on the completion!

damn! those are some cool temps.

cruising that's probably not sooo bad. I'd like to see the oil temp a little higher...man the cooler looks huge with the bumper cover on!!! I finally get some scale on that thing!!

I've got some SS mesh, I painted black and covered all my openings...I'll send it to you if you want to try it. PM me.

Hopefully once you get into boost your temps come up accordingly. I'd run reg. Valvoline 20W-50 oil (recommendation for the top 4 rotor engine builder...and I haven't used anything since)...just keep it changed every 2500mi.

Kento

Congrats on your finished project (well, almost finished, at least until you get your ducting and any other small teething issues worked out). It's always satisfying to complete something of this magnitude.

I'll be more interested to see how your coolant temps (I'm sure your oil and intake temps will be fine) react to sustained periods of boosting.

airborne

thanks dubulup, kento. fans work great, btw carson And I have some mesh actually. I built some screening for the rear of the driver side rad -1 layer mesh, 1 layer screen. Eventually i'll relocate the coolant reservoir and do the same on the pass. side.

For the oil I used to run 20w50, maybe I'll go back and see what happens. But what I was worried about was that I somehow installed the t-stat wrong. I guess it starts to open around 165 though? And then 180 is the fully open temp.

The one thing I noticed so far about coolant temps is that they fluctuate a lot more. Hopefully over the winter I'll get ducting and things finished up. Right now it may work, but it is ugly as hell

BobfisH

The difference is negligable in my opinion. Think how many litres of air per minute a turbo will output....for most smaller ones, its in the region of 150-200. Thats anything between 2 and 4 litres per second. The difference in piping between a FMIC system and a vmount is going to be probably a maximum of 30cm each side, and using a piping diameter of 2.5" thats only adding 3.8 litres of extra volume, given you are using the same intercooler. Thats about 1 second of difference to fill that volume, and that isnt even taking into account the fact that a turbo will spin faster until it meets its boost level (i.e fills the void) so it may even be less.

Kento

Your opinion is well taken, but you're forgetting that while the little Hitachi primary turbo may "output so many liters of air per minute", in order to build any pressure in the whole intake tract, it needs to create it by "compounding"; basically, a very large amount of those "liters of air" need to packed into a larger space (also, a "huge FMIC" will create additional volume). While the turbo is getting spooled up, it's not putting out all that much volume, and that means additional time to build compounded pressure.

Note that I'm not saying installing any FMIC will make your stock-twin FD feel like you just slapped on a T-78 or something. I just stated that it's not quite "the ideal" setup in response to that particular post.