Well, despite my momentary crisis of faith…
http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=14057.0I did decide that the best possible thing I could would be to finish my car and to fall back in love with it. I already have a big motor sitting on a stand waiting for a home and so I said screw it, I’m putting it together. If I build a tube chassis bug eye sprite someday at least I’ll have a fast car to play with while I’m building that (figure it’d only take a decade or so).
In the meantime, I’m overdue for some progress pictures of what I’ve been working on.
Radiator / Fan v2.0: Road Race I’m still a big “fan” (pun intended) of the JTR radiator kit I’m replacing. It was perfect for a street car and should hold up great under track duty with a stock ls1 I still recommend it. On track with heads and cam it was fine but seemed to be pretty close to the limit. With a vented hood (ahem RONIN) it would probably be OK, but it became a lot more marginal after I added AC. Something about my condenser being in front was just enough that the coolant system couldn’t quite keep up and I’d end up blowing the heater to bring it back in line any time I was driving kinda hard.
I was chatting about this with Ash (LargeOrangeFont) a while back and we decided to mirror parts for most of a new build. We picked the pieces more than a year ago which tells you how much wrenching I’ve not been getting done.
Anyways, here’s what the new setup looks like:
Parts:
-Howe 34329-RNF Note: Howe’s own literature claims this is 28 1/4 wide.
http://www.howeracing.com/t-RadiatorsDouble-Table.aspxhttp://www.howeracing.com/Images/DoublePassDiagram.gifHowever, our contact at Howe said that it would only be 28 1/4" if there was an oil cooler in there (which there isn’t in ours), therefore this radiator is actually 27 1/4”.
-Spal 30102052
http://www.spalusa.com/store/main.aspx?p=itemdetail&item=30102052The trick detail about this fan is not only is it high flow and a pretty good match the radiator dimensionally, but it also uses the rubber flapper gates to minimize resistance to flow at speed.
Ash did a super trick lay down setup that I love (his car, not mine, random pic for reference)
However, I’d already done my own over the radiator intake that seemed to work very very well so I opted to not. Staying upright will also my keeping my AC condenser a little easier.
Mounting is custom. I picked up a good rivet nut tool a while back and it’s now probably one of my favorite tools. I just carved come custom top and bottom caps out of aluminum square tubing to land where I wanted. I’m using riv nuts to support the fan.
For isolators I’m using McMaster part number 9225K64. The load rating on these might be a little light for long term service (15 lbs each in shear) but it was close enough to try. I can step up to a level harder if needed, the only downside is that those isolators only come in orange.
Mounting took a little figuring out as I wanted to be able to drop this in vertically without relying on the big wrap around tow hood feature the JTR’s had. If you check out the pics above you’ll see the slots I carved in the side mounts so I could drop this in like I wanted. The lower isolators fit such that one side uses a factory mounting hole. The other is a riv nut.
Only other changes were upsizing the fill point to use ½” heater hose and the addition of a drain plug (also ½”, although in this case it uses an ORB-8 plug)
Here's what it'll look like in the car (final fit check prior to touching up paint as this took a little more trimming around the end tanks vs. my prior setup)
