Does a BIGGER Radiator Actually Do Anything?

- If I wanna keep myself cool, I can just throw on this hat for some shade. But if I wanna be even cooler, I can just put on a bigger hat. (whip cracking) So if I wanna keep my car cooler, can I just throw a bigger radiator in it?

Well, kinda. There's actually a lot more to it than that, but we'll talk about it. Today we're gonna revamp the entire cooling system on the Miata, finally.

I'm Zach and this is Money Pit. It's time to be cool, finally. (lightening crack) - Thank you to Constant Contact for sponsoring this portion of this video.

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- As you guys may remember a few episodes ago, we took the Miata to Willow Springs race track, and it was almost super fun except the car kept overheating. It was overheating all day. And that was when we knew that we needed to upgrade the cooling system.

So all my cooling system parts are finally here. Everything showed up from Flyin' Miata and we're ready to install them. We're gonna make this car so that we can beat the ever living hell out of it on the racetrack, even if it's 110 degrees out and it won't overheat, that's the goal.

But the first thing we need to do in order to make that happen is take out all this stock stuff. So that's where we're going to start. (upbeat music) All right.

So here's the deal making horsepower means that you're going to make a lot of heat. Your engine makes an enormous amount of heat, just trying to drive down the road. So if not for a cooling system, it would literally just melt itself.

So a cooling system is super important to keeping your car running right. So that's why we're going to be upgrading ours today. (upbeat music) You can see some rust color when you look in the hoses and in the radiator.

And that's one of the biggest killers of a good functioning cooling system. The rust color is not abnormal. You just need to make sure you're not getting a lot of corrosion and corrosion buildup.

That'll clog your radiator and just make your cooling system work pretty poorly. There's our stock radiator and the stock fans, which is a little guy, but 25 years old. This is a Downflow radiator.

The hot radiator juice comes in up here and flows down these tubes as air flows across them, the heat is extracted and then it goes back to get some more heat and bring it back to the radiator. Now this is our normal fan, that runs when the thermostat is open and this is the fan that comes on. I think when things get really hot or when the air conditioning is on.

We're going to replace these two fans with one big fat fan, and we're going to control it with our MegaSquirt hopefully, that should be pretty cool. So to replace our dinky stock, Downflow radiator Flyin' Miata sent us this nasty coil, rad Crossflow radiator, which a lot of people say is better for cooling because since gravity isn't working to pull the coolant down through the vertical tubes, the coolant ends up spending more time in these tubes, and thus cools more. The tubes are also often longer side to side, just because of how radiators are shaped.

So you ended up getting more cooling, per tube. You also need to consider getting air through it. So for that Flyin' Miata sent me their stage two airflow kit and it is nasty.

So here's our shroud. You see all these little squares, well, we're going to put flaps in those spots, a fan, just kind of hanging out behind your radiator does okay. But it doesn't pull that much air directly through the radiator because it's not forced to.

Air is gonna take the easiest path it can. So by adding a shroud, you force air to be pulled through the radiator, since it, can't come through the shroud. So that's great at idle when you're sitting still and you're relying on the fan to move air through your radiator.

But once you start moving, you're driving down the street like on the highway. There's a lot of airflow just naturally because you're driving fast. So in those instances, shrouds can actually be harmful because they block some of that natural airflow.

That's where these squares come into play. We're gonna install awesome flaps that Flyin' Miata included. And basically what those will do is allow air to be directed through the radiator by the shroud when we're sitting and, just using the fan.

But when we're driving down the street and there's a bunch of natural airflow, those flaps will be blown open, and airflow can go right through the shroud. So this is Flyin' Miata stage two Brushless kit, and it is killer. It uses this one gigantic spall fan and it's brushless, which is really cool.

I'm also going to be able to wire this thing into our new MegaSquirt and control it that way. So we'll get exactly as much air flow through our radiator as the ECU thinks we need at all times. So this is going to be a super sick replacement for our stock, radiator and fans, but this isn't all we're doing.

There's an underlying problem with the Miata and the way that it's designed. You see the engine in the Miata is originally from a front wheel drive car, and everything was fine and dandy when they were using it there. But when they decided to stick that engine in the Miata, they needed to repackage some things to make it fit the way they want it to.

And one of those things that they repackaged is the cooling system. So on the Miata as things are, this is our thermostat housing. This is where a thermostat lives.

We'll talk more about it in a little bit, but basically the hot coolant comes out here and into the radiator. And then it goes through the radiator cools off and comes back in to the engine over here, also at the front of the engine. So what ends up happening here is that the front of the engine stays really cool.

And the back of the engine doesn't get that much coolant flow. So what people do is what's called a coolant reroute and it moves the thermostat to the back of the engine, Flyin' Miata sent me their coolant reroute kit. And it is unsurprisingly, perfect.

So we're going to install that too. I'm gonna tackle the coolant reroute first, get that out of the way. Then we'll slam our new fancy fans in.

Might bust some knuckles today. All right. So to get access to the area that I need to get to, to install the coolant reroute, we're going to have to remove the coil pack and the spark plug wires.

Now we're gonna have to remove a few connectors from the back of the head and we just basically need to get back onto the backside of the head, which is right up against the firewall. So it's going to be a little bit tight, but we should be able to make it work. We've got it.

Basically, we're going to remove this factory cast piece that has the coolant temp sensor in it and the heater core inlet, we're going to remove that and replace it with the piece that Flyin' Miata sent us. (upbeat music) And hear she is, not too bad. Oh, there you can see that's where the, coolant temp sensor that sends the temperature to the ECU.

That's where it sits, just in that steady little stream of coolant. Oh, messy, messy messy. (upbeat music) Where that ranch at.

Thinking ahead. All right. So we've got our reroute ready to go in the car.

The old gasket is scraped off. New gasket is in place. You've got to trim it a little bit.

Everything's great. The only thing I need to do is install our thermostat, clip this into place, and then this is ready to go on. But I think we need to talk about the thermostat real quick.

So first off, we've got to understand that every engine wants to run at its operating temperature. It doesn't want to run colder than that. It doesn't want to run hotter than that.

Usually on most cars, most modern cars, that's gonna be around 195 to 210 degrees somewhere in that ballpark. So when we upgrade our cooling system, we're not trying to make the engine run cooler. What we want is to give our cooling system a little more headroom so that we can make things a little hotter, but it can still keep things at our operating temperature.

Every thermostat has a temperature at which it opens. This is 180 degrees Fahrenheit. It'll usually run a little bit over that and an equalized system, but it's this that determines our operating temperature.

It's really simple. This thing just opens with heat. There's a little wax pellet in here that expands and forces this thing open.

We'll go do it on the stove. You can do it in a bucket of water. So with all that said, let's stick this thing in.

And then we're installing stuff. That'll be we're on the way home. I should've thought ahead and bought new heater, core hoses.

These are gross. And like wicked stretched out. It'll work for now, but I might have to get a different hose clamp.

I hate putting old parts under my new shiny parts. (upbeat music) Sensor is in. Since we've got the new reroute piece at the back with our new thermostat, you're gonna remove this neck at the front and remove the factory thermostat.

(upbeat music) Alright, we've got our old nasty thermostat out. And now all we need to do is clean up this gasket surface here, put on our new block off plate with our new gasket. Then we can route our hose from the back to the front.

Then we can put in our radiator and fans. (upbeat music) Alright, now we've got our coolant reroute in place with the hose, all where it needs to be. It's time to focus on the new radiator and fans.

So I gotta take these brackets off the stock radiator, and they'll bolt right up to our new coil, rad radiator. And then we can put the fans on the new radiator and then we should be able to drop it into place without much drama. We'll see.

(upbeat music) All right, cool. So the radiator is pretty much ready to go in, but I actually want to take a minute and do something else. So a lot of times when you get a radiator or anything with fins like this, it'll show up with a little bit of damage to the fins.

It's really not uncommon. And it's also not that big of a deal since we have it out and it's so easy, I'm gonna take a minute and straighten up these bent fins just to make sure the radiator is as efficient as possible. They make specific tools to do this with, and I think they all suck.

So I just use a little, a straight tip to pick and the results are pretty good. It's super easy. It's just kind of time consuming.

This is the kind of thing you sit on your porch as the sun sets and you just straighten out your fins and watch the world go by. All right. Well, our fins are a pretty straight.

I missed these ones. Our fins are pretty straight now and the radiator is pretty much ready to go in. Now we just need to bolt up our fan shroud, get our fans on here.

And then we'll drop the whole unit in. These are those little flaps I was talking about earlier, the flaps that let air flow through the shroud when you're moving at a high rate of speed, but that keep the fan pulling air just through the radiator when you're stopped. So when you're moving air comes through, but when you're not there, they're suck, shut.

'Cause the fan's trying to pull air from the side of things, this also comes with this kind of bulb seal that will help seal the shroud against the radiator. So we gotta install this, cut it to fit, all these little ridges. And then I think that is all we gotta do to get the shroud ready.

(soft music) Okay, a couple of fasteners down here. So there is a fan and shroud then we just gotta attach it to a radiator. All right.

So we've got a series of spacers that are gonna go between the radiator and the shroud to help us make sure things are accurately spaced, which is important. We get all these spacers in (mumbles) down, I don't think this thing's ready to drop into place. Let's see if it fits.

Well, the picture on the front made it look like the fan was totally, definitely mounted to the outside of the shroud, but I've got so much clearance issue with the sway bar that it kind of feel like it should be mounted on the inside of the shroud. I debated this for like 10 minutes and then I just went based on what the picture looked like. We should be able to drop into place without much drama.

So after a quick assessment. It's pretty obvious that I just had the fan in backwards. We just need to flip it around.

Makes a few things, make a lot more sense to me. And then I think we might actually fit in place. We might have a little sway bar clearance issue, but we also might not.

She's in there. We're touching the sway bar just a tiny bit. And some of these AC lines and the brackets will need bent a little bit, but not bad.

I think that's all I'm gonna do for tonight. We've got this in the reroute is great and this is ready to just plug into our new radiator. We made some good progress.

See you in the morning. All right, we're back in action. This thing is set.

Now what we need to do is get our hoses trimmed to fit and meet up with the radiator just right. Then it's time to start wiring this thing up. We're gonna have to wire the fans.

I don't think it's going to be too hard, but it's going to be a little bit of a learning process. 'Cause I'm gonna get this fan wired into our MegaSquirt so we can control it that way. Might be a little confusing.

We'll find out. (drum music) So we got our reroute hose kind of ran up next to the engine and we're up here at the front. Now it's time to trim it.

One of the easiest ways to make a nice square cut on silicone is with a sharp razor blade. And you just wrap a nice piece of masking tape around it and use that as a guide. I'm gonna go a little bit on the long side just to be safe, but that should be about what we need.

It looks great. Now I just need to put a hose clamp on there, tighten it up. And then the reroute is done.

The radiator is all plumbed in. All right. So it's time to wire the fans in, but that shouldn't be a very big deal.

Flyin' Miata includes this really nice jumper harness and they are four wires and we only have to use three. So it shouldn't be too bad. Basically, this plugs into the fan right here, and then we need to ground the black wire to the chassis somewhere.

So we'll find a nice ground. Then we need to get 12 volts to this. So we'll hook this up on the alternator and then we need to get signal to our white wire.

So we're gonna wire this in to the OEM fan wiring, and I should be able to control that with the MegaSquirt. So it seems like it's not going to be too bad, but there's only one way to find out. (upbeat music) Alright, so we've got our bleeder cracked open at the coolant reroute and we've got a hose on the bleeder.

So we're basically ready to put some antifreeze in this thing and get it started bleed the cooling system. And then hopefully we're done. This kind of funnel is going to be your best friend in terms of bleeding a cooling system, because you can mount it to your cooling system, just like this.

So it's sealed up no leaks and it raises the level. The level of this is higher than any other part of your engine, which means it'll help push air out of the system. All right.

So we gotta decide what mixture to run in our cooling system. So 50 50 is pretty common. This comes premixed super convenient, but the fact is that water itself is better at dissipating heat than cooling is.

But the thing is that coolant's job isn't only to dissipate heat. It's also to prevent corrosion. We'll go about 70 30, and that'll help us dissipate heat a little bit better.

And we'll still retain the anti corrosive and lubrication properties of the coolant. So that's what we're gonna do. You just always need to make sure that you have enough antifreeze for how cold it gets, where you live.

Don't use tap water, don't use any other water just distilled. Alright, so we've got some fluid coming up out of our hose, which is good. That means the system's filling up with fluid.

Alright. I think it's time to fire this hog up. (car engine roaring) That's just coolant burning off.

So now we just need to let this thing warm up to operating temperature so that that thermostat opens and we'll get full flow through the system. The radiator will be flowing and any air that's still stuck in the system can come out then, and then we should be good, baby. This thing's looking great.

We're in MegaSquirt here, in the tuner studio, and this is our fan control section. So what I just did was I set the target for the fan on temperature to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is really low. I just want to do that, to confirm that everything's working and that I'm in control of it.

And then we'll move that back up to about 180 590 degrees Fahrenheit close to our operating temperature. All right. So I think we've gotten all the air out of this thing that we're going to get.

It's nice and bled. So we pop off our funnel system, see how much of a mess I can keep from making. (upbeat music) All right.

Now we can put the finishing piece on this puzzle, which is actually a really important piece there. The radiator cap, something you don't really think too much about, but it's a really important piece of this whole puzzle because that is what keeps pressure in the system. Alright, so that does it.

That's a whole cooling system. I am excited. This thing is ready to be beaten on and she shouldn't overheat.

So, with that said let's go beat on her. All right, we're ready to give this thing a drive. I am super excited.

We've been letting it idle. We've been bleeding, the cooling system, and I'm pretty confident that we've got all the air out of it. It is at a rock steady 185 to 190 degrees.

And I just gonna go drive around make sure nothing weird happens. We're just gonna go make sure everything's cool. Get it.

(car engine roaring) Now, usually a car is not gonna overheat as easily when it's moving, because when it's moving, there's a lot of air flow that's doing the job of the fan. Temperatures will creep up at idle to about 195. The fans kick on, you can barely even tell they're on and they bring temps right back down to about 190.

So it's perfect. I'm super excited about this, to be honest, I know that a cooling system upgrade maybe doesn't seem that sexy or that cool. It doesn't add any horsepower, but the fact is the cooling system on this car has been one of my biggest concerns with the cooling system sorted out.

I'm gonna feel so much better about this car in general. It just feels so much more capable to me. Sure, I can't put that much heat in it on the streets and it's not 110 degrees in the desert, but the fact is I'm planning on turbocharging this thing, and guess what a turbocharger brings a lot of heat with it.

The cooling system now can handle that. The cooling system as it was, would have just died. It would have just looked at a turbo and got.

. . This is an exciting upgrade for me.

The car's ready to deal with a turbo. The car is ready to deal with me driving it. So things are great in the Miata.

I hope you guys had fun watching the video. I had a good time making it. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @zachjobe, follow Donut on all social media @donutmedia.

And I will see you guys next week. Goodbye.