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I haven't driven it yet and need to drive over 5 speed bumps just to leave my complex. I suspect I will be fine. The only thing that really hangs low is the front plastic frame surrounding the fan. It's really not bad. Unless your car is slammed
Dale, thanks again for the thread. It looks like the fans are about 14awg, some of those wires in the fuse box are another step or two up.
I really wish there were more documentation on this kit. The manual is great at telling you what you need for each step but then the illustrations are next to useless. I've been working on cars for 15+ years as a hobby and this has made me feel like an amateur. I will try to take a bunch of pics to share.
So far I've got my rad + fans, condenser and air splitter mounted. I test fitted the intercooler and radiator piping yesterday. I do not have much room for that pipe that goes from the front of the rad, routing as Dale has it pictured will result in some rubbing as it stands. Going to play with it some more but I'm really itching to get this done as ive had my car since October and I think its been on the road a full two months of that with upgrades and replacements in between.
Also, I have a RHD 92 model. The ac lines do NOT work. The routing looks the same but the ends will not go to my oem stuff. Hoping I can swap the ends of my factory lines over or something to get that sorted. My a/c was blowing the fuse but i'd like to have it in the future as summer SUCKS here.
Feed bumper required some trimming to clear the rad and brackets in the lower part of the opening. The fans hang low but im not too worried since they are closer to the front wheels, sometimes i drag my bumper on the driveway but no issues with the fans hitting.
Dale, sorry to hijack your thread. I just thought it would be good to have more in one place. Did you try out that Honda Insight battery? I have a 40B19L and it fits but the posts are on the wrong side. My only concern with the Insight battery is its almost an inch taller, have to check the thread length on the bolts for the tie down.
Also, im curious how others did the rear fan shroud stays. It says to use zip ties around the provided brackets but I couldnt figure out a way to use zip ties without drilling holes into the shroud for them to go through.
Here are a few more photos and some comments:
I moved the relay box to this position so it wouldn't be blocking any air. I could not find any more length in the wiring to make it point upwards as ive seen on other installs. You can also see my fan extension wires and routing on the right. If you look carefully at the radiator mount on the bottom left, I added a few washers to offset the radiator more to the right to provide more clearance for the hose shown in the next picture.
You can also see one of the drains in the radiator here, it has one in the same spot opposite end so should be no trouble to drain, other than this one landing right on my bumper. Will cross that bridge when the time comes.
With the Koyo, this area is very very tight. I was able to mash it in there without it constantly sitting against something else but there is a little bit of wiggle in everything so I added some insulation from my old radiator hoses to hopefully keep down any metallic rattles from the movement.
Battery tray here, very nice piece. I was able to attach that ground without any trickery or modification.
AST and included mounting bracket on opposite end of battery tray. I ended up changing this after the photo. I have a RE Amemiya AST. Installed like this it wanted to occupy the same space as the intercooler pipe that goes above it. I took a small flat bracket and bent it to hang off of the battery tray and then the AST mounts to it. This moved the AST to picture left and got rid of my space issue. Sits directly under the intercooler pipe now.
On the shroud towards the front of the car, it bolts on with the kit brackets. The rear has the brackets that swing under the rad and “catch” the shroud, no bolts. It said to ziptie them but I couldnt figure out way an effective way to use the zip ties
Just a FYI for anyone considering the HKS intercooler for big power (500rwhp+). It does not like a lot of boost and cannot cool a large displacement of air. Mine failed a few years ago before I upgraded to my current setup.
It is still a great kit for normal boost levels and is complete. The radiator fans do hang very low so it will require some vigilance to keep you from tearing them off of the car. Unfortunately, I have torn them off due to road damage around a blind turn.
Just a FYI for anyone considering the HKS intercooler for big power (500rwhp+). It does not like a lot of boost and cannot cool a large displacement of air. Mine failed a few years ago before I upgraded to my current setup.
It is still a great kit for normal boost levels and is complete. The radiator fans do hang very low so it will require some vigilance to keep you from tearing them off of the car. Unfortunately, I have torn them off due to road damage around a blind turn.
Sorry to see that damage. Can I ask what your new setup is? And effectiveness of cooling iats etc vs hks solution?
Sorry to see that damage. Can I ask what your new setup is? And effectiveness of cooling iats etc vs hks solution?
I'm probably a bad example to follow. I went with a custom 2000HP A2W intercooler setup. It's apples to oranges on IAT's, they no longer move. It's not a very street friendly setup in comparison.
I'm probably a bad example to follow. I went with a custom 2000HP A2W intercooler setup. It's apples to oranges on IAT's, they no longer move. It's not a very street friendly setup in comparison.
I'm probably a bad example to follow. I went with a custom 2000HP A2W intercooler setup. It's apples to oranges on IAT's, they no longer move. It's not a very street friendly setup in comparison.
My car is atypical of most RX-7's but I'll give you my take.
First you have to consider that the air-to-air intercoolers on most cars, simply just work; There is no effort involved. Sometimes we upsize them to better handle capacity.
So if you're comparing an air-to-air to an air-to-water, there are trade-off's. You do get additional capacity, but really there is no reason to upgrade if you're not overcapacity on your current intercooler.
I typically don't suggest going air-to-water unless you absolutely have to. I was well past what could be handled by an air-to-air intercooler on my setup. By well past, I would flash the HKS v-mount in less than 330ft from a dig. 80F AIT to 190F+ AIT (logged) on a cold engine in less than 4 seconds (possibly higher as the AIT sensor will have some lag).
So I was forced to find an alternative solution. It looked like even a bigger, front mounted A2A would barely work, and barely is just not going to cut it; especially with goals of 45+psi. Hindsight: I should have tried the bigger A2A but I wanted to go overkill. I did not want a repeat issue.
So the cons of an A2W vs A2A:
You can heat soak the A2W and it will take a long time to cool off. You can install a heat exchanger but there is just not much room for an adequately sized one, so you still heat soak.
More components to buy.
Added complexity to a simple component.
It weighs substantially more than your standard air-to-air intercooler. Mine adds around 100lbs to the car (pump, tank, 5-7 gallons of water, lines, intercooler, etc).
You need to wire and plumb the intercooler and intercooler pump in the car.
The cost on the air-to-water intercooler is much higher.
They take up a lot of real estate in the engine bay.
You need a water tank, thus eating up more real estate (either in the trunk, or in the engine bay).
More electrical load on the car which doesn't have much free capacity.
Takes another output from ECU to trigger. My car already has an expander box so outputs are limited.
The benefits of the A2W vs A2A:
You can go sub-ambient temperatures for a single pass. (It melts any ice in one run, and doesn't stay sub-ambient)
You have more overall capacity to hold heat. This results in more consistent air temps at higher boost.
You can run the pump and cool the intercooler before start-up. You can also just install fans on the A2A, so this is kind of useless.
So essentially, it's better for a drag car. You can run ice for a single pass, then re-ice the car and go. I made it work for my street car but the trade-off's are worth mentioning and not many rotaries are running 35psi as "low boost".
Getting completely off-topic of the HKS IC, but IRT heat exchangers, wonder if anyone has tried hooking up the A/C evaporator as an IC?
I've looked into it, it's done fairly regularly for supercharged cars. A lot of investment for not a lot of extra performance over an A2A though. Usually by the time you have an A2W, you no longer have A/C anyway.
I just completed installing the kit. It took me about 3 full days to install it in the road in front my house. This was with plenty of breaks and fiddling around with things. I could probably do it in half the time if I were to do it again.
There were two bolts in my kit that were definitely too short for their intended purposes, so I had to make a trip to the hardware store. I was also disappointed with the usage of the oem rubber radiator mounts for the splitter. Bolted together, the threads on the oem pieces barely stick out enough for the supplied nuts. Otherwise, the kit went together well, and I found the instructions sufficient.
Crusing around during an 85-90F degree day, my water temps were somewhere around 80-90C degrees and air temps stayed around 43C degrees. This is with a Koyo N-flow.
For the fuse box in the front, I managed to get mine zip tied pointing upwards by pulling the harness its attached to down a bit. The harness the fuse box wires are attached to is tucked up into a slot with a plastic bracket. You can pop the bracket and harness off the metal support, remove the plastic bracket from the harness, and pull the whole harness down to get enough length.
Why would someone want a $3k v-mount kit on a factory twin turbo system with a single 25 year old oil cooler?
I think a $250 W/M injection system would work better.
Last edited by Nakd n Fearless; 07-15-19 at 04:26 AM.
Crusing around during an 85-90F degree day, my water temps were somewhere around 80-90C degrees and air temps stayed around 43C degrees. This is with a Koyo N-flow.
We need more info on the effect of iats with this kit on the twins. It’s a hell of an investment to make cost-wise for me. Many thanks on sharing.
I would like to know how quickly iats drop when heat soaked and transitioning from a stop to moving on city roads vs interstate hwy speeds. What boost are you running etc. Also what happens during boost. Do you still see rises in iats or are they nominal changes?
I am looking at AI also but think the mechanical solution of a vmount is a better approach than the risk of a failure in an AI solution.
Tommykaira, thanks for the photos. I need to go back in and try to get my fuse/relay box like yours.
Nakd N Fearless, the kit was only $2k+ shipping from japan for me, new. W/M adds a potential major failure point and i'm not very familiar with it or the tuning aspect. A v mount is pretty much bolt on and forget.
Aarkaah, I plan to hook up my wideband to the datalogit soon and then i'll do some logging. Will post in thread once I do so.
We need more info on the effect of iats with this kit on the twins. It’s a hell of an investment to make cost-wise for me. Many thanks on sharing.
I would like to know how quickly iats drop when heat soaked and transitioning from a stop to moving on city roads vs interstate hwy speeds. What boost are you running etc. Also what happens during boost. Do you still see rises in iats or are they nominal changes?
I am looking at AI also but think the mechanical solution of a vmount is a better approach than the risk of a failure in an AI solution.
We're in the middle of a heat wave here (97F), so I took the car out for a more thorough shakedown and noted some numbers. All my numbers are from the PowerFC.
The car is a 93 touring running stock turbos at 10 psi. Strapped to the Koyo is an unknown quality of aftermarket fans. One of the fans is broken and the other is wired to run continuously.
After warming up the car and driving it around town for 20 minutes, I took it on the highway and drove it a steady 65-70 mph out of boost.
After 10 minutes
water temp 80C
air temp 47C
Then, I pulled over and let it idle for 10 minutes. Water temp 98C
Air temp 64C
Driving back down the highway for 5 minutes, water temp dropped to 92C and air temp dropped to 52C. I got off the highway and temps were back down to 84C and 49C after 5 more minutes of light throttle and a few stop lights. I drove it around town for the next 15 minutes, in and out of boost, and I didn't notice much of a difference. Final temps before I shut it off were 84C and 48C.
What are some solutions you guys came up with regarding the under tray clearance issue with the fan shrouds? I was under the impression that running the under tray was necessary for temperature cooling efficiency, and being that I live in the dreadful state of New Mexico the roads are horrible and covered with debris.
02-08-19, 07:50 AM
