did a couple of welds on my ducting today figured i would try to clear my name as a welder, not my best but far from bad.

 

 

We all love women but don't get along with the guy who punches his wife in the face when she asks for some attention.....

If that makes any sense. Maybe it is a far fetched dream that all FD owners would want to do nothing but the best for their cars and if they are doing something take 5 times longer doing it so it looks as OEMish as possible I don't know if anyone is with my on that one or if it makes me a masochist?

 

Pretty or ugly, a weld is only good if it holds up to a 1.5x pressure test.

Dave

 

HAHA....

Great comment. I am often embarrassed to show off some of my work, because even though it is neat and perfectly functional, it may not be very pretty.

If it works as intended, doesn't fall off, and isn't totally fugly, I'll usually consider it a success.

 

I'm running a china knock off rad and has been for years, im happy with it.

nice work.

 

thats cool so im not the only one to try the china melting pot radiator.

 

Know this is out late but funny enough Dave I was thinking "If I had a shop what would my slogan be?" and my answer came to only one thing "Function over Form" hehe.

 

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Figured id post pics of the finished product. The radiator fits and runs great!

 

 

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Im not trying to take anyones side here but,Im glad you took the initiative in trying out a new product. just because its less expensive than the competition doesnt necessarily means its a low quality product. If a company is providing a quality product for less, that just means that the guys who are charging more will either have to improve quality or lower price to compete. Competition among business is good for us, the consumers.


AS far as rotary people habing the money and acatually paying for quality parts i have to say in my experience they are some of the biggest penny pinchers i have ever met. I think a lot of people get a good deal on the car and expect that was going to be their biggest investment. I get some pretty amusingly low offers on my sales sometimes.

 

As was stated before. If it works and he saves the dime more power to him. I'm more interested in the numbers myself. Temperature comparison before and after? Was there a CFM rating on the radiator when you bought it? It looks far from bad in the pictures (escpecially since you cant see any of the "horrible" welding . I cant weld at all...I make my buddy at the ship yard do it.

 

Yeah the quality compared to say a koyo is really not there but, as long as it doesnt leak and keeps temps where they should be who cares. Why spend extra money any way when your going to hack it up in the first place. As far as coolent temps go i just have a stock gauge right now.

Best part is i proboble spent 300 bucks to make the whole setup, minis my ebay front mount which i had before. Plus i could make it the way i want, and my ducting is nice, most other kits dont even come with ducting, and there 1000-1500.

 

Im not sure if this is a good way of thinking. Normally this would be true but the demand for FD parts is very low. It would be awful of all the big names exited the market due to it no longer being financially viable. It would be really freaking bad. I think we would still have small shops willing to build stuff for us but they probably won't do that to long due them having to charge high prices because of the low demand. Competition or not, if we are left with no-names, we are in a world of hurt, especially because of the finicky nature of our cars.

 

fail or succeed, either way, more power for you for trying... ill be getting a "ebay" ic in the future to make my own v mount.... it is a hobby, its fun, you learn from your mistakes... atleast the man is trying to mod his car himself then outsourcing it to a shop. power to you

 

I think that what most people missed wsa the fact that he was planning on cutting the radiator up anyways to make the V mount. in that case the smart thing was ot get a cheaper unit to start with.

FWIW a lot of "Japans" automotive stuff is being made in china also....I live in japan and see a lot of the stuff come over in the local ports...some only get a quick rebadge, sticker, tack welded plate, others are the parts (cores what not) come from japan and only the end tanks and brackets get welded on here. That goes for alot of items that get sold in the states as "Japanese"

kenn

 

Agreed. It didn't click in for me (despite the fact that he said so in his initial post! ) that he intended to modify for a VMIC until I saw the pics.

Hindsight being 20/20, the finished product looks nice! I'd be interested to see what kind of results he's seeing.


On my vmic I'm seeing 79-83 water temps (79 regular driving, 83 pummeling the car, or stuck in traffic) and 7-10 degrees above ambient for air temp.

 

It sucks i didnt know what my stock intake temps are cuz i dont know how much better they are oh well. I made an airbox i kinda made up, that was my initial plan. It didnt end up working out, but i still will prolly figure something out with that, ill post some more pics of the setup and my airbox that went by the wayside.

 

Honestly the easiest way to tell is if you have a PFC, just monitor your intake temps, along with water temp (I also track boost, and IDC). You can get a good baseline before you start driving by looking at your water/air readings when you first start the car. If you've been out and about during the day and your car hasn't cooled down completely (it probably won't unless you leave it parked in the shade for 4+ hours) then you can always just check the local area temp on the local news website.


I always track my temp by noting the water/air temp before driving...

 

+1 to that. props to the OP. nice project.