Ask your friend for the details on those micro switches! Sounds perfect!



Bit of progress. Tried out a 15mm spacer. My goal is to get the seat 1.5" forward so I can recline it more to get my helmet to clear. This was a no-go. From here I'll be trying a 1.5" spacer before considering other options. Anything further away and it becomes cumbersome to reach the dash controls such as the turn signals. I really don't wanna drop back down to a 320mm wheel. The car is far from track worthy and with the seat back, my legs clear fine.




And back to the main event, lets begin shall we-

Peeling back the layers. It become very obvious why this setup doesn't work, without the 30"X6" hole cut in the bumper which is no more. There is simply too much **** for the air to pass through with the OEM S4 bumper. 4" intercooler, then a 6" gap, around the frame brace, through a 2" oil cooler, then to a 4.75" gap to the dual 10" pusher fans and, then maybe the bottom 4" of the radiator. Good news is the AC wiring is still in place and everything (metal wise) was correctly removed (at the spot welds.) It sadly seems the oem oil cooler is toast, leaking from the fins on the driver's side... So much for delaying the dual cooler setup. Wallet still hasn't recovered.



Tomorrow if all pans out, we'll work at removing the intercooler piping and start draining fluids.

 

There is someone in Japan making extended turn signal stalks, which is kind of interesting.
https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp...on/b1174597432

 

^^ Interesting find. Thank you

Got her mostly stripped. Big radiator, sadly only the bottom 4" were in the air flow, behind the OEM FC oil cooler/ 4" intercooler and no fans.

Tomorrow, I hope to be able to cut the front metal ducting OFF the crash beam, everything is tacked together. Then, the plan is to reinstall the crash beam for support before I cut out the tubular cross brace in the front. I will make a brace for the rear, similar to that the FD has. All the Greddy components tie together onto it for the bottom part of the "V" configuration. I don't think I'll be able to find the an OEM one off a FD used. This should be enough to stiffen the chassis back up. For now the oil cooler is just hanging out. There is enough slack that it can just rest under the car on the ground, out of the way for now. I'm looking into replacement options. I'm really leaning towards SakeBomb's dual 'smart cooler' setup for the FD. At it's core it is a Series 6 Setrab 19 row w/m22 fittings with a low-profile thermostat/bypass mounted to the each core. With the areas to the sides cleared out, and no wheel liners mounting them on each side seems like a good option. The only roadblock is the wallet and wife are not too happy... for now it can be solved at a later date.

 

Finished removing the wiring and then began the metal work. First I worked on the bash bar, removing the ducting and the jack/lifting point. That freed up a lot of room. It was then reinstalled onto the car. This gives me a good reference for the front.


Next up, the cross brace was cut out and its spotwelds drilled out and removed. Following that I removed the oem radiator brackets. The driver side was simply more spotwelds and a 1" cut across the top. The passenger side simply got the cutoff wheel along the corner. Dressing will come later.



And with a 33" piece of 90° angled aluminum across the frame and a few 2×4's for mockup... the puzzle begins!

 

if you're looking for ideas, the Cybertruck has this duct thing which is kind of neat.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/286221309130

 

Ton of progress as I work on solving the puzzle. I'm going to skip a few things as a week has passed that has felt like a month. I'll try to document but, it feels like rambling.

I got the radiator mounted. After playing with everything until I was nauseous I determined I needed to just go for it. I removed everything and determined I needed 3 points of reference on where this things needed to go.

The 1st point was the undertray/body panel. Under zero circumstances did I want this expensive part handing below the rest of the body. After a few minutes I determined I could install the LBR underpanel backwards to quickly mount it without having to address the wiring and oil cooler shoved under the engine. From there I gave myself 1/2 and inch clearance to the lowest part of the radiator. Any gap could easily be filled with foam/rubber gasket tape and it would ensure that even if I did bottom out minimal damage would result.

The 2nd point was the the frame rails and the engine/pulley bolts. I wanted to ensure I could still remove and work on the engine without having to remove the cooling system. This set the distance infront of the engine I needed to be, roughly 7.5" The height of the frame rails determined the cross line on where the back support of the V would rest. I quickly cheded if this would work by looking at where the front of the radiator would mount. Mounted here it was back behind the crash bar and the frame rail end's front crumple zones. In the event of a head on hit the parts 'should' survive. The FD mounts them closer to the bumper openings, I'll just have to rely on ducting to make the difference. As far as height of the rear cross member/support, flush or a max of 1/16" ABOVE the frame rails ensured the mounts welded to the rad and IC were parallel with each other. I'm confident of this because the lower radiator mounts/drain are parallel with the ground as are the top hose fittings.

The 3rd point is the upper hood latch. I have zero intention of cutting up a stock style hood to fit the IC and the charge piping. So the IC needs to mount below this point. I was able to flip the included bracket around and machine a 1" spacer to bolt it behind the hood latch, below the upper metal.


With those points, I just began trying. Eventually things began to click.


(And on a side note, anyone got a lead on an aftermarket bumper support? Mine is a rusty mess and all the used ones I see being olds don't seem to be any better. I'd love an aluminum one!)

I really wanted to use as much of the Greddy kits as possible, after all I paid for it, sadly it didn't seem to be. 'Keep it simple stupid' comes to mind. With that, I tossed the included charge piping, inlet elbow and most other parts. The gorgeous inlet, doesn't mate with the 20b/13b-RE throttle body as the angle is tucked inwards compared to the DIY one on the car. Instead of adding swoopy charge-piping I opted for straight shots and adjusted the intercooler another inch to accommodate. This should make the transient response amazing!




Threw the bumper and hood on to before committing and all fit like it was meant to be! (View through the RE Amemiya hood scoop) Easily enough room to do some ducting and/or a rain guard.





The Greddy kit, some versions seem to include a cast turbo outlet. Mine did not. I found the part for sale but, have not seen enough to know if it will work with the 13b-RE's HT20's, or is just FD exclusive. In the meantime I'll follow the previous owners footsteps and modify the cast part, even if temporarily/proof of concept. Clocked 110 degrees should get it straight forward to the IC.

The elusive Greddy part...




It somewhat worked. I ordered various silicone elbows but am pretty limited on finding 2.5 to 2.75. I'll play with them before re-cutting and welding the elbow. On the intake I committed to 3" to form a straight shot and keep things symmetrical.
I keep telling myself just to get things working, THEN we can go back and make things pretty... this also helps me with cutting down ordering random parts/ couplers to try out.


With progress on that front I began working on hard mounting the intercooler. I decided to keep with Aluminum to keep the weight down. I also have spent a lot of time making the setup modular and removable.
The lower (front) radiator took way to long to figure out. While the rad fits, the mounts do not, I had to figure out some reverse brackets to compensate and fit everything between the frame rails. I ended up going with longer rubber bushings from NAPPA and then modify them into something smaller than what the Greddy kit included. This was the only way to retain the function and keep it above the LRB lower body panel. It is a super tight fit and once bolted together the mounting plates began to shift inward where they bolted to the steel OEM core support's sheet metal. To combat this a 1/8th thick brace was made to add back in the rigidity. This also serves a 2nd function. With the weight intercooler resting being the hood latch I noticed it slightly deforming the metal it mounted to. This was enough that it became difficult to pop the hood due to the front twisting upward. I decided to add in a vertical support to the horizontal brace we made earlier. This was all positioned just above the intercooler's opening duct to serve as a mounting point for the remaining duct work to come, and to give me a place to remount the wiring and relays that called that area home before the V-mount.

Things are still modular, unwelded and without gussets (strengthening) added to allow a bit of grace for problems still to come but, I'm confident that the template is set.

I've ordered some of the OEM braces (the ones that go from the fenders along the front of the headlight to the missing sheet metal previously cut out,) ordered and on the way. I hope to tie into it with the final structure.

White waiting on some parts this week, I decided to modify the AC condenser mounts. The JP3 Motorsport's brackets while lock it in do one things that Greddy kit goes against. I mounts the AC condenser stacked on top of the radiator. The whole goal of the Greddy kit is that all items in the 'stack' get their own clean air flow. So with that I spent the evening prototyping some raised brackets, aiming to get it as close as possible where the FD3S condenser would originally sit on the kit.

(JP3 tie downs on the right)


They fit and look great, I left them a little big so I can fit some foam tape on them to help quit things down in the future. Still loads of space for the ac lines. The RX8 condenser has a drier built in, so no worries there either!
This is also a good pic letting you see how close I got to matching the IC angle to the FD's intended angle. I'm just a bit steeper, but not having to modify the intercooler and being able to just reverse the mount is well worth having to extend the ducting.


I'm going to take a bit of a break until more parts roll in, hopefully jumping back at it late this weekend. I suppose my next task is to use my 90 degree angled aluminum and make the final cross-member bar. Once that is done and the charge pipes are set, we'll begin working on the coolant hose/fitting and tanks. Without the 8' of of charge pipes the front mount had, I have so much room to play with too!
Next time!


Is that an outlet that ducts the fan out of the vehicle?

 

Are you sure you want to keep the condenser raised? Visually it appears that it will increase turbulence in that area and in traffic you may not get the airflow across it that you need.
I have the AC condenser mounted flat on the Greddy radiator in my FD and have had zero cooling issues.

 

its the inlet, that sits behind the bumper, and radiator is tilted backwards

 

The original Greddy design was to mount the OEM condenser as the OP has it modified at the moment. Based on our own testing, it was more optimal to keep the condenser mounted against the radiator, where it also benefits from the fans drawing air, even at idle or crawling traffic ....

 

Thanks for the feedback all!

Moto, are you running the Greddy kit? I looked through your purple fd thread... I the raise in mind that the fd condenser mounted to the Greddy rad does not cover the entire surface area of the rad like the RX-8 condenser does. You have the first 5" across the front leading edge open. You also lose the 4'x10" (2" each side) for the mounts and the the RX-8's drier. I could simply be over thinking it. It'll just have to be something I'll do some grassroots testing on come summer. Luckily, the JP3 mounts are tapped so it only takes 1 screw (each) and a couple minutes to swap them.

---
Had a few minutes to play with the last few bits of charge piping Friday. Was able to make some of the universal parts I bought work, after some trimming. At this point I think I can safely go ahead and weld up everything and scratch that task off the list soon.

I also have begun to think about the intake. While I really, really want to switch over the a Haltech Elite or their newer Nexus standalone, I think it'll have to wait. I'll already have my hands full troubleshooting the work I'm doing now. Best to knock that out and get it running before adding the next hurdle. As far as the intake... this means instead of using the sexy twin intakes, I'll have to Y-pipe them together and use the ugly oem AFM/housing. I just began sitting parts in the space trying to visualize the outcome. Sadly, the s4 AFM flapper box is too large to fit beside the intercooler nicely. I'm reading into converting to the s5 AFM sensor and housing. It is a much smaller housing and might be a quick solution if I can't figure anything else out.


The air filter would sit above the openings for the v-mount inside the bumper/fascia. This would keep it cool and dry but, would also require a little freah air plumbed in taking away from the v-mount's path. It is very similar layout to what I ran on my FBM's turbocharged BRZ.

 

back in the day, it was really common for the racers to divide the grille opening into intake/cooling/brake ducts.
this is the "cassette" style from 1981 IMSA GTU, the "cassette" part is the air intake for the engine, the other side is the radiator/oil cooler


what ecu are you running?

 

Oem s4 w/ with Apex'i Neo AFC.

 

I can't remember where I left off on that build thread so I'll have to go check, I'm think it was after I had the car running though. The car hasn't seen time on a track but I did put almost 3200 miles on it in the last year. I never once had a cooling issue and it overcooled so much while moving this fall/winter, before it was parked due to salted roads, that I had to block about 60% of the radiator off with cardboard to maintain temp on 35/40*F mornings and 50*F afternoons. I used the AC on several ~95+*F days over the summer and did not have any spikes in temp either. The FD electric fans are great units, they did not run in the winter, but they probably made a huge difference in the summer.

 

Pretty much zero progress. Backyard and home maintence happened, about got that wrapped up but drained the bank account (and then some) in the process...

Managed to get the Greddy elbow in. It is nearly perfect other than the flange being 1/2" too big for the RE turbo to bolt together. Not sure if I'll mod it or wait. The plan is to go with BNR's stage 3, which I expect it will bolt right being a FD part and all.

 

I see you're in KC. If you need access to a four post lift, CNC Plasma table (4x8), or powder coating let me know. I'm up north in Liberty.

 

Got the early FD crossover in. As expected lines up with the Greddy parts but the flange isn't clocked correctly to mount to the HT10 turbochargers. It is way beefier and larger transition than the RE's. 2.5"-3" compared to the 2.0"-2.25" RE part!





Thanks, south off 152 on North Oak over here.

 

I was fairly unsuccessful the last few nights at trying to make the FD turbo parts to work. If I got one aspect right, the clearance to the Greddy IC kit or ability to mount the AFM were incompatible. With more time and bespoke parts, I'm sure this could work. It however is not in the cards for right now. I'm almost 100% certain without doing a tube front chassis, I cannot fit the S4 AFM in the front of the car, as evidenced by a thousand pie cuts and welds. I will make one last attempt by converting to the S5 AFM which is smaller and has the ability to be mounted in whatever direction and orientation I'd like vs the S4 flapper box which must be parallel with the ground. I've got one on the way hopefully by the end of the week. Remembering the short term goal is get the car back to running and cooling before the next phase. If I can get the S5 AFM to fit, then I can get back to finishing up the Greddy installation and on to ducting and oil cooling.


Ultimately, I want to go Haltech but, I've already blown my budget on toys this year so it is unlikely to be soon, (at best Q4.) That is why I bought the full Greddy kit with the dual intakes, no AFM makes for a simple solution.

In the meantime, progress must be made. I kept my old bumper that came with on the car for this purpose. To test fit, cut up and see what can fit. Having large openings really made figuring out what I could fit behind the bumper.



I then begun on my CAD work. Cardboard assisted design that is!



Keep it simple, small and functional as possible. The ducting looks really small on the car, but is roughly 26" X 10"


Pretty much mocked up. I may raise the bottom up 0.25" to make fitting the bumper (and lip) easier. No point in going further until I get the S5 AFM and cone mocked up to make sure the current design works.

 

Looks like the S5 Afm will work! The rad ducting needs it's height shortened by 0.75" as to not rub the bottom of the front bumper (when installed.) I've ordered the aluminum, but still need to make a path to the air filter. Speaking of, I switched to a 2.5 × 8" K&N filter. Once it arrives I can get the ducting template finished and move foreward on to the fan/wp placement.

 

Somehow the transference from cardboard to 0.063 aluminum didn't go too smoothly despite the whole measure twice, cut once. I ended up with extremely tight tolerances that will need corrected which is baffling considering the cardboard is a good 1/4 thicker than the aluminum. It's so tight I cannot get it back far enough in between the frame rails on the top leaving a good 1/2" gap along the top. Another round of trimming is needed and then I'll make some hard mounts. I'm going a bit wide around the ac lines as I don't know what that will end up looking like in the future. I ended up not using the new K&N filter and went with my old, larger one. The size was 2x8" however the inlet was actually 2" and the filter element 6" long. Too small and I didn't want to step up and down in the short run too the AFM. With that choice made, I now know where the filter will sit and am debating if I should do a small louver (scoop) to pull fresh air to it from my ducting below. Oil coolers should be here by 20th, so I'll have a more complete plan then.

 

Not much progress on Yuki. Had a (litterally) house blow up 1 block over while I was working. Took out my old Miller I've spent about $600 trying to get it fixed before giving in and just buying another welder. Since then I've just been praticing my thin-gauge aluminum chops before everything gets welded up finally. Getting there, but am in no rush as I only get one shot at this.

A bit of a setback with the oilcoolers. Confirmed dimensions with Sakebomb and it doesn't appear I can fit their FD smart cooler setup. Core itself with the thermostat is 13x8.5x2". Even angled, I seem to max out around 8x10" unless I modify the crash bar or ditch the popups.

Of which for 7's day I bought sone new glass lights and a nice led conversion kit! The little things.

 

Been working on the turbo inlet. Got it cut apart, clocked and rewelded. Tons of junk in the casting, had to do a heat past to melt most of it out before welding, even so some more touchups are needed. Tomorrow a 6" long carbide grinding bit should arrive. I'll work on blending/porting the inside transitions between cast and tubing aswell as creating the pockets that will allow me to still get a socket on the bolt for installation.

Pretty happy with how my stainless wire wheel and scotchbrite were able to get it close to cast looking. I think a pass through a media blaster will make it look great! I don't think I have the heart to try and polish it!

 

This is my current puzzle. How to modify the radiaor inlet to accept a -16AN fitting and clear the turbo piping.
Chopping it off and welding it shorter nets 1/2" but that will easily be killed once the other side of the fitting (-16 90°) is attached.




Started working on the final cross member/rad support beam.

 

Chop it off and weld on a tight radius 90, then weld that fitting on.

 

That seems like what will have to happen. I just cannot find anything that is tight enough. OD is 1 3/4". I'm debating whether I should 45° cut the existing inlet and just 90° it towards the driver's side. It wouldn't be smooth flowing but it would for sure be a tighter 90. I'm reluctant to chop the inlet off flush but if nothing is behind it, inside the tank, I could just pass the fitting through the surface and angle it that way.

Hard to tell if something like this would work.
https://www.jegs.com/i/HPS-Performan...5CLR2/10002/-1

Also, redit the cross brace/latch support. Simplified it and extended the 90 across tp help reduce the vertical flex ot had. Much wider tham the last to to provide more room to possibly mount the wiring and relays to.

 

Some good progress. First up, knocked out the final support beam for the V-mount. Behind the triangular gussets will be 2 bolts into the frame rails to hold it in place. I pretty much gave up on trying to weld the spacers it and settled for giant tacks.


From there, I cut out more of the old core support's metal, and bent it up rounding off the edges. This will allow me to snake the OEM harness back towards the front,

Added some structure to my hood-latch brace and front support. Was able to get the relays and probably the horn mounted up front. I also finished welding up my duct work which whooped my butt! Tons of over heats and penetration. I probably should have welded it from the inside joint as I had to grind the outside smooth. I am already pushing clearances between the frame rails and ever MM counts! The ducting was designed to be quickly removable for future servicing. 2 screws in the back and a front support that slides over the bumper bar. It'll need some more finish work and a ton of foam tape to keep things from chattering, sharp edges covered and all air sealed!



Been dreading this but, got the AN fitting welded in. After a very difficult balancing act to get the fittings tacked into place, it went rather well. I haven't filled it yet but, I don't see anything that gives concern. I ended up 55 degree cutting the old inlet and welding the fitting on sideways.

Got my clearance!

While I had the radiator out I began working on the fan assembly. It is a NOS FD fan shroud with series 2 RX-8 motors (15-1500-N3R1 )and blades. The 3rd gen section seems to love this upgrade. Pretty much a drop in conversion. Sadly, one of the motors I picked up seems to be shot, so I need to grab another one.



My to-do list is getting shorter on the cooling side, despite what the wide tells everyone! I really want to turn the key before November.

-Get the front core support brackets/hood support/lower rad mount fully welded and pretty.
-Get the correct metric rivet-nuts for the rear v-mount brace to mount to the frame rails.
-Grab another rx-8 fan motor and get the fans wired/tested.
-Figure out where/how I'll be mounting my electric water pump and coolant hoses! I'm trying to plan it, but have a sneaking suspicion I'll just be ordering a ton of random AN fittings, hoses and just going at it- wallet be damned!
-Fab a coolant fill neck/overflow and plump into the system! I have the Pettit Racing Swirl pot for this but, may explore another option.
-Fab a place for 3-4 coolant sensors (OEM and Davies Craig.) I don't really have room to drill and tap the radiator so another idea is needed. The existing 'coolant block' is way to large to fit in my setup I think.
-Order some new Setrab cores for the oil coolers.