The new Mishimoto radiator, fans and housing finally arrived. It's taken a lot longer than I expected.
Radiator back.
Fans front.
Fans back.
A bit of sunshine this morning, so I set about swapping over the radiator. Removing the old radiator was fairly straight forward. The bottom of the radiator sits on two hangers and the rubber pins and bushes needed to be swapped over to the new radiator. They are held in place with circlips.
The aluminium fins on the old radiator were literally crumbling to dust.
Before the new radiator could be fitted, the fan housing needs to be bolted to it. The new one is fatter and ends up very close to the anti-roll bar. There was one clamp from the aircon system that no longer fits but, it wasn't doing much to start with.
The only flaw in the process is that the primary fan connector is different to the one on the car.
Some people just connect both fans to the one pair of wires but this will overload the relay and wiring, especially as the new fans draw more current. I was very keen to leave them independently connected and controlled.
Before I fill the car back up with coolant, I flushed the system through and I've taken the header tank out to clean it. This involved the lower bolt shearing, so that has to be drilled out and tapped with a new thread.
The coolant header tank took a lot of effort to clean properly. I ended up using bleach on the plastic parts and various bottle brushes.
Decided to use a standard twin 6.3mm blade connector and replace both the wiring loom connector and Mishimoto connector for the fan. These were crimped and soldered and I also used heat shrink sleeving to protect the connector from dust and moisture.
Note: I checked the continuity of the loom wires to the fan and both seemed to be connected to ground. Only when the relay operates, does the power line switch over to +12V. I also used a car battery to apply power to the Mishimoto fan, to check the polarity and that the fan spins in the right direction. The easiest way to test the fans, is to operate the air-conditioning as this turns them both on.
The new radiator is fatter than the old one, so I expected to have to put in more coolant. I put in just over 6.5 litres of anti-freeze and distilled water into the header tank and radiator, with 3.5 litres of this being anti-freeze.
I then went out for a test drive in the sunshine to check everything was working properly. Temperature were rock steady :-)