Has anyone beefed up their cooling system? If so how? I have a 2 core 56mm thick aluminium radiator and 16" electric fan. I find that the cooling system struggles in the hot weather and would really like to have a little more safety margine. I'm thinking about fitting an additional smaller sub radiator out front. Ideas would be appreciated. PS. car is a Z32, 2+2x2 = V8. Not possible to fit a clutch fan or cooling scroud.
-Remove aircon, as it blocks a significant amount of flow. -Different front bar for more flow. -Different/better coolant?
My black TT sits in traffic after being heatsoaked for hours. I've never seen it above 86 degrees. Stock cooling system up to scratch is unbeatable.
With my 350 SBC I am using a toyota cressida radiator, slightly larger frontal area than the non-turbo 300zx radaitor but it is also double row. On the front of that I have duel 14" thermo fans. From the testing I have done, it does not get above approx 185*F. The twin turbo radiator does not have enough frontal area for a good thermo fan set to work properly. You can now fit a much larger rad as you no longer have intercooler piping in the way. I chose the cressida unit as it is the largest that will fit between the rails, and had the in/out in the correct position for my engine.
Stock thermostat. I never get anywhere near overheating temps, last thing i want is to be colder! eBay radiator.
;/ answer the question and maybe your previous comments will make some sense. Cheap ebay radiators dont last long when the car is modded.
Well what is so specific in the modding process of a road car that changes the ability of the stock cooling system to be insufficent? It's got everything rebuilt with all the usual junk thrown in. What evidence leads you to believe one aluminum radiator is considerably superior at heat transfer than the next aluminium radiator? I've had a $550 PWR and a $200 china and they both worked 100% for me. Everything I've experienced leads me to believe stock thermostat, fan, shroud and any clean aluminium radiator will cool any Z sufficiently. Provided the heads and turbos arnt old and gummed up with junk.
considering the fact that my stock and cheap ebay rads have not been good enough on a mildly modded (at best) z.
what makes you think it's the radiator? you have issues elsewhere. I can rattle off members who shoot around all day with a stock radiator even with a FMIC in front of it it and they don't overheat. and plenty with eBay rads in heavily modded zeds.
As has been posted below, you can fit a much larger radiator in there now without all the TT plumbing in the way so do that first. I suggest fitting a good oil cooler as well, this will help keep the temps down but wont make up for a radiator that is too small. I found the Spal 16" fan struggled to pull enough air through the thicker Aluminium rads & figured a two core might actually work better due to more air being pulled through. (Bigger is not always better) There is plenty of room in the front to get a custom made radiator & have it placed at an angle to get a better surface area and more room to mount bigger fans.
Look at the rest of the system first From my experience (not much) 56mm Radiator is better than stock. But both will keep your Z cool. My Z got hot a lot when I first bought it, so I changed the thermostat (fitted a dayco brand one, old one stuck open so I though I had it fixed) and flushed it a lot to get out bits of scale in the system. It didn?t help so I bought a 56 mm Radiator... That didn?t help but when I fitted the 56 mm radiator I removed the thermostat to back flush the engine only to realise that the thermostat was binding on the block causing it to stay closed. Solution... genuine thermostat, now do :br: and I?m
I had a PWR twinpass TT radiator with 14" Davies Craig thermo fan and a davies craig Electric water pump and digital controller on my VH in the zed. It actually ran too cool if you let it idle, I never got around to making the fan switch on and off with temp. And it was perfect driving around, not that I had air con though.
I believe that most heat related problems on a Zed can be traced back to the viscous fan hub not working properly. Also the flick test for the hub does not work. If in doubt when chasing heat related problems one of the first steps should be to replace or refill ( i have found that refilling works fine ) the viscous fluid then if that doesn't fix it try a new radiator ( or get it rodded ) and thermostat. I'm running a standard TT radiator and it doesn't over heat. Each year i drain and refill the viscous fluid as part of my pre-summer service ( for under $10 ). It's cheap enough so why not. Just my 2 cents worth. Dave
