Cooling is an important aspect of keeping a tuned car running safely. I have seen my fair share of Honda's running around with a large turbo system boosting insane amounts while still retaining their stock radiator. In this day of relatively cheap aluminum aftermarket substitutes, I think this shouldn't ever be the case.
So when I knew I was going to be living in El Paso for a few years, my first impression was there would be alot of heat. Right up there on the list of things to do before I got there to the car was install a bigger radiator. Of course, installation of a bigger radiator sounded simple enough, i had swapped out my old Accord's radiator with a stock sized one, but I thought no big deal this time around.
I found out whenever you put in a larger core radiator, you're going to be pushing the fans back whatever length you added to it. And since I believe it is the job of Honda engineers to piece together parts so that there is no way to take out one without taking out 5, then I immediately had fan contact issues. The fan on the passengers side came in contact with the motor mount but the only way I found this out was by driving the car and hearing a noise that sounded like somebody put a playing card in the spokes of a bicycle. It turned out that the fan blades were nicking the motor mount as the car drove forward and air pushed the fans naturally. So I had to take a pair of snips and cut most of the plastic off the tips of the fan blades to clear it. But one day as I drove down the road, I hit a pothole which made the whole car shut off entirely. Here I found that the fan shroud on the drivers side (which is made out of metal) was pushed so close to the alternator wire that it cut through it and grounded itself out! So I decided to take the whole fan on the drivers side out entirely. Besides, I took the Air Conditioning out a little bit later which was the purpose of that little fan anyway I think...
Eventually I just took out all the fans anyway for a reason that I don't remember anymore.
Then one day, I was driving to a shop to look for some fans (the car never overheated!) and was told by an associate that he had friends in a business here in town that would install the fans if I bought them from him. So he hooked me up with 2 FAL fans (12") and a 4x4 truck oil cooler. Then we drove to his buddy's shop. Although the guys at the shop were kind of pushy by insisting that they needed to do the work, they really did some A+ fabrication on the fan mounts as well as a place to mount the new oil cooler (for the ATTS). The fans looked great, performed better than stock and also were extremely thin so as to not interfere with the alternator wire or engine mount ever again. Although they can be pricey, I would recommend these fans for anybody no matter what your build up is.
Very nice fit and finish. That's an Apex'i ground wire running above the fans just so you know
You're probably thinking what the heck is up with always having header wrap on your headers? Well it might look old fashioned and they say the science is there (keeping more heat trapped inside of the header will improve velocity) but really the first time I did it was for the reason the headers I got were used and didn't look the best. So I wrapped them up to hide it. Whether or not they improved exhaust velocity flow is debatable, but it certainly kept the engine bay MUCH cooler. You can tell it instantly by sticking your hand in there after it was running. The best part is if you have something go wrong with your engine and may need to inspect it immediately or if you're going to work on it so soon after the cars been warmed up, these will literally take away your chance of being burnt.
On a final note, DC Sports has a disclaimer that says not to use header wrap with any of their headers, especially their ceramic headers (ceramic functions roughly the same way the header wrap does, albeit less efficiently) but I had no problems with the 3+ years I kept header wrap on them. Eventually the flex pipe went bad and I got a whole new header all together.
For more of a bling effect than anything else, I decided to try out OBX's Silicone Hoses. And back in the day when I thought that having an engine bay that had every color in it made sense, I opted for their yellow silicone radiator hose kit. I figured why should I have to pay double the price for SAMCO hoses when these looked just the same? Well I was way wrong. The OBX hoses had small leaks around the radiator necks and engine coolant necks almost immediately. It seemed that no matter how many times you tightened the clamps or double clamped the hoses, they were not going to stop the tiny leak. Almost 6 months after I installed them, I had an ongoing problem where the bottom radiator hose would constantly pop off, and since that's the lowest point in your cooling system, it would completely drain the engine of coolant. It's lucky I didn't blow up my block! These hoses eventually got the ax due to never being able to stand up to any sort of pressure and never being able to have a truly solid seal on the radiator. I converted back to Rubber Hoses...
While I was in Iraq debating on what pieces I would need to make my new supercharged engine truly streetable, I became completely engrossed in my oil filter relocator/oil cooler setup. I got to the point where after doing my research, I drew up a diagram on PowerPoint for Honda Bob to start setting up before I got there, it looked something like this:
It might look extremely complicated but I believed this would be the last word in every single oil cooler and filter relocation set up known to man! Well it didn't quite work out that way because somewhere along the line a hose got mixed up and it negatively affected oil pressure to where it almost dropped to nothing at all. It's because it was feeding it backwards. But I promise to everything that is holy, that once I get this car straightened out, that the oil cooler setup will live again! I still have all of my custom pieces, it'll just take me a while to figure out how I'm going to do it. This last picture shows how it looks with the filter bolted in and if you look near the far side of the radiator support, the AN fittings that are jutting back inside the engine bay are connected to the new oil thermostat. That was an expensive piece to play with!
This picture shows the filter relocator attached to where the stock filter used to be and the lines I used.
For now I'm just sticking with the tried and true oil filter relocator that the Jackson Racing Supercharger came with. It's nothing special anymore, but it does add around .7 quarts of oil to the system which is nice for extra insurance. Oil Pressure drop is negligable in my opinion.
kinda dirty, but you see where this bolts on to where the old battery tray used to be.
One final picture I wanted to show you all was the ATTS Cooler I had installed. This is an off-the-shelf 4x4 oil cooler that was made to be really tough. The two port holes are both on the same side but it's a lightweight aluminum piece with aluminum fins sticking out. It's pretty ballsy and I might use it for my regular oil cooler a little later since the ATTS will be removed in the future... Simply unbolt the stock harmonic balancer bar and fabricate a couple of metal mounts and you can bolt it up.
