Best Methods to cool down motor? (overheating issues)
 

Last track day (my first one) I had some overheating issues, I have another one coming up and the track is longer so I need to be running cool.




Since I am in Arizona would it help me to run 100% water with water wetter in it? Right now I'm running 50% antifreeze I think.



I have a Koyo Radiator, would modding so that both fans run help?


What else can I do that isn't too difficult?



Thanks!

Yes on dumping antifreeze out. I run distilled water and bottle of water wetter.

Also tape off/duct the entire area around the radiator. Ensure that any air that enters the front mount opening... ONLY can get through the radiator.

I experienced the same my track day a few weeks ago...and mine is pretty much stock, no turbo.

Having the heater on w/ full blower will help some, too.

on the track, you don't want your fans turning, they will act to block the airflow at track speeds instead of promote airflow. Antifreeze will reduce water's natural 'specific heat' (that is to say: it will reduce waters ability to hold and transfer heat energy) 100% water is better than water/antifreeze mix at transferring that heat from your engine to your radiator any day of the week! (Literally, the ONLY 2 purposes for antifreeze are to A: keep your coolant from freezing, and B: to act as a lubricant which prohibits corrosion) Water wetter will serve to reduce the surface tension of water much like soap does. (Bill nye, the science guy FTMFW!) It is also a corrosion inhibitor. Basically, it will increase the 'speed' at which energy can be transferred from the engine to the water, and then from the water to the radiator.

Your absolute largest gain (if you've got at least average intelligence, then you've done this already) is a coolant reroute.

After that, look for ways of promoting airflow across the heat exchanger. Ducting and Extraction hoods come to mind. Also, you will absolutely want to get rid of any "fan shroud" if you've added one. They're fantastic for the street/autoX, but they prohibit airflow at track speeds. If you've raised the back of your hood (cowl induction?) then put it back down. Mazda put the rubber in there where your hood seals to the rear of your engine bay for a reason. That's a high pressure area and will serve to significantly reduce airflow through your heat exchangers.

Finally; If you've removed the stock miata undertray PUT IT BACK.

That undertray serves to protect the engine and belts from crap coming up from the bottom. In my honest opinion, thats a SIDE EFFECT.

The undertray serves VERY EFFECTIVELY to increase the pressure differential across the heat exchangers. If you don't have the undertray, you've commited thermal suicide.

Bought the car a month ago and it didn't come with an undertray. Also haven't done a coolant reroute. Is a kit required or can it be done for cheap? I'll swap out the system with water, since that's easy.

The bigger Koyo is a good solution


Another thing you can do in summer is remove the thermostat completely (it is removed from my track Spec Miata along with the A/C and I never have overheating problems even when in an hour race on a 98 degree day with 100% humidity!)

Excuse my ignorance but what does removing the thermostat do?

even the manual says only 40% antifreeze at most.

it opens up to much more free flowing (ever notice how small an amount of fluid is actually allowed through even with a thermostat open?)


in w2w racing, antifreeze isn't even allowed so distilled water and water wetter is how everyone on-track does it (along with no thermostat)

BTW: I do NOT have that under tray on my SM any more (and it did a 10 hour enduro like that before I even bought the car!)

+1 on the Hood extractor. Do this
https://www.miataturbo.net/showthrea...ght=carbontrix

<-- has one for sale.

I noticed a difference during freeway driving by adding/removing this alone...

http://tinyurl.com/3xjuabj

Your SM doesn't show these symptoms because it has a much bigger problem; it suffers from never-ending turbo lag :giggle:

When going to refill the system with water, remember it will take several fills and drains to get a good amount of the antifreeze out (I think we did a fill and drain 4x to get it all out of the system)

I'm going through the same issues on the street only when the AC is turned on.

1. Run a 90/10 mixture water/antifreeze (or water wetter)
2. Add the coolant reroute
3. Duct everything from the front bumper to the radiator (this is my next step to see if it helps)

it was 102*F out at lunch. i was running the a/c and my coolant temps didnt get over 202*F in stop and go traffic. ha.

remove the thermostat and see how much cooler you run (I hope you have a REAL water temp gauge installed btw)

removing the thermostat does nothing. unless it's stuck closed.

I already told you what to do in email, and that was to make ducting to force air through the heat exchangers.
http://www.pitstopusa.com/SearchResu...ategoryID=2749

Right now ISC racing has the best water reroute on the market if you can't make your own, like a man. You have to call them though because their website sucks my ass...and feel free to send me their rear swaybar as a service fee. Any reroute you buy from anyone else will have shitty adapters, external thermostat housings, and crappy rubber hose with a spring in it. The ISC one is all metal and all man, and I know you have a thing for men in general. You don't have to deal with 4' of rubber hose to weather and fail in a couple years.

I built my own out of necessity because I demand reliability first and foremost. I bet Abe could make a copy of mine if you're interested. He's about to convert mine to hardpipes.

I thought a shop was going to "move the intercooler" in a failed attempt to make it cool?

False






FACT is not only I have seen a visible difference in cooling but so have others (proven with properly installed mechanical water temp gauge)


I was trying to offer what I know works/helps in a track setting based on my own personal experience. Have you ever even tried to do this? I have my doubts!



But I'm not going to sit here and argue over this with you or anyone else so my post about 'tips' is done. Do as you want and gluck!

You're so hot to me right now. :makeout:

but if I move the water faster, it will move through the radiator faster and not sit in the heat exchanger to cool!!!


It may work in an SM, but it won't work in a turbo car. I don't get why people can't listen to us. I've made it a personal mission to educate the turbo miata world on cooling, I'm not an engineer but my coolant temps don't go above 190* on the racetrack in the summer heat at 95*.

okay

perhaps things are indeed different for a turbo and cooling, you got me there

I conceed

It may work, it may not...but I wouldn't expect it to work nor would I want to deal with that on the street. The cooling system also can't build pressure in the block without the restriction, so the water boils sooner than a system with a restriction.

Are there write ups for the ducting? Easy to do? What do you reccomend Hustler, since you're so good at it.

Pressure builds up regardless (it is a closed system after all and if no pressure, you have a leak to address that is a more pressing matter!)


Where it is not wise to use is if the ambient temp is 40 degrees or colder as you never allow the engine to properly warm up!


My friend has his removed in his daily driver/track car but he won;t drive the car when it is 40 or colder out since he has another car to drive as well.

This is me, and those of you trying to dispute the fact that removing the thermostat works, its a simple project to do and takes maybe 10 min to test it out.

The thermostat is very VERY restrictive to the fluid and is there to regulate the flow of the the liquid passing through it (to get the car up to temp faster basicly) Removing it (as well as disconecting the sensor with it) allows the fluid to circulate with out being restricted, keeping the temp of the fluid cooler because it moves as fast as the waterpump can push it through the system with no restrictions.

If your system runs cool, the only negative effects to it will be the car runing a bit more rich than usual, but make sure to have the proper guages to monitor those things properly.

my car was overheating at the start of the year... i did 3 things at once:
1)less coolant... more water and a bottle of water wetter
2)new cooler thermostat (180 down from the 190 stocker...debatable how much this helped)
3) added the factory underpan back to the car.


granted i already have a mishimoto thick core rad, but i have never seen the temp move from just below vertical (operating temp)

monday i was out ripping and it was ~40degrees Celcius (104 degrees F) + humidity factor. it was hot enough out that spool was affected.

I see 160*F within 5 minutes of driving, typically before I'm out of my neighborhood. I always see 185-187*F driving around, fans do not typically turn on. If it does, the temps drop back to 190*F within a minute. and drop back to 185*F once I start moving again. In this >100*F weather, I have yet to see over 202*F with the a/c running on full blast. I've done nothing special to my cooling system, just done it proper. Stock thermostat, stock fans, stock heater outlet. Simply a reroute, slim aluminum rad, and some shrouding. Hell, I still run a 60/40 mixture.

Is that with just regular city driving or also highway cruising? If I'm constantly above 3.5k rpms with the AC on it starts to overheat. Otherwise it's fine around town.

I don't have any overheating issues when I'm just DD'ing, even when it is 115*+, it stays below vertical. Only time I have had issue when I was beating on it on the track.

Better than the M-Tuned? If so, why? I tried calling, but got their answering machine.

C

Read my post again...all metal pipes means o janky rubber shit with ghetto springs and no remote garbage thermostat.

load is more important than rpm.
Search this forum and good luck. The threads are here but I don't know where to send you without searching creatively.
I agree that it may work, but considering the amount of time water is in the heat-exchanger I'm not sure its an absolute solution for a turbo car in Arizona. I have a friend who works at Risi and I know they rely on ducting and heat exchanger inlet sizing (for aero) and they run no thermostat but 3 different sized restrictors to slow flow in different temperatures. I believe years ago he told me they aim to heat-soak the radiator, then adjust the airflow to the radiators (on the exit side).

I firmly believe that ducting and a belly pan is the "right" way to do it because then everything works properly and all you have to do is turn the key to drive it in winter or August at the track, rather than switch everything around. I don't understand everyone's aversion to ducting but I presume its because there is no off-the-shelf product to sell for it.

I meant the ISC one.

C

Look up genesplicer's build thread for a brief write up and some great pictures on how to properly, cheaply, and incredibly effectively make your radiator/intercooler ducting.

Thanks

Let me get in
 

I have done a Reroute with no tstat and a Ebay radiator. In Florida I'm doing 185*F all day with a 50/50 mix of full concentrated coolant and water. Getting ready for the track days with ducting, parallel wiring, and maybe a hood extractor.

I agree that you should have a belly pan and routing the air through the radiator is the proper way to go, BUT that doesn't always solve the issue. I still have the belly pan, and was at the track on the stock radiator, running water with water wetter, the heat blasting ect. and the temp was still getting too high. I ended up removing the T Stat., and getting a Koyo Radiator and problem was solved.

This is all about asking how to make the engine run cooler. Hence the response.

I googled isc coolant reroute and came with nothing. Any pictures of this setup? How much was it? And if Abe can replicate hustler's reroute, how much would that be?

Here you go: ISC RACING LINK

If someone gets a hold of them, please post up the price.

Eh. I'd do homebrew again before I did that.

Good job running ducting to force air through the radiator.

Wouldn't removing the thermostat (and thus, the small restriction it provides) also decrease the pressure differential between the high and low sides of the water pump? This would surely decrease the volume of coolant that flows to the accessories? It would lead to higher oil temps if using the stock oil cooler, and it would lead to less effective water-cooling at the turbocharger for a debatable amount of gain in coolant temp.

Unorganized facts:
o Removing the thermostat will allow water to circulate faster.
o Water that circulates faster through the engine will also circulate faster through the radiator.
o The greatest exchange of energy will occur at the greatest temperature differential (when water first enters the engine or the heat exchanger)
o In a thermostatless setup, you have a higher volume of fluid at the high temperature differential all of the time because it is traveling faster
o In a thermostatted setup, the temperature differential is higher all of the time because the fluid has more time to heat-soak in the engine. The fluid is hotter vs. ambient when it enters the heat exchanger, and so releases energy faster per unit volume.
o Any setup such that the capacity to dispense heat is higher than the capacity to produce it (perhaps a non-turbo car with some investment in the cooling system?) will show the thermostatless option to run cooler than the thermostatted option because the thermostat will never be fully open.

Conclusion:
A thermostatless setup, due to it's design, should run insignificantly lower temperatures than a thermostatted setup which has reached operating temperature. Both setups will have the same capacity to eliminate energy in the form of heat, and so both should be equal in their ability to keep the car cool in a track environment. In a thermostatless setup, the pressure differential between low and high sides of the water pump will likely decrease the flow to other water cooled accessories, including a stock oil cooler and turbocharger. This means no thermostat = hotter turbo. A hot turbo may insignificantly increase the frequency of lubrication and component failure to include manifold studs. To safely increase cooling capacity, other alterations will be necessary.

water through turbo does not equal turbo getting cooled....water through turbo is specifically there to prevent coking oil after shut down.

I'm sorry, but you have no clue what you're talking about.

All the thermostat does is hold onto the fluids until they get the motor up to proper operating temperature, once that temperature is achieved then it opens and allows the fluid to flow through, cooling off the motor. If you have coolant running through the turbo then you have some major issues. You should be using oil to cool the turbo, not any kind of water or coolant (the boiling point of water/coolant is MUCH lower than oil and will cause the fluid that you do have in there to not do its job by cooling the motor)

If you have ever been to six flags think of a ride as the path the fluid goes on to get through the motor, and the line of people as fresh fluid. A thermostat is like the part where you climb aboard the cars to ride the ride.

Running with out a thermostat is simply getting rid of the "que lines" and adding more cars to the point that there isn't a backup at all and people can just run through line to get on as fast as they can get onto the cars going through the station.

Weather or not you run a thermostat will have 0% of a difference on of you're running a naturally aspirated car or a turboed car in terms of cooling.

The reason they create choke points on some turbo cars is so that they can control the temperature (kind of like a thermostat) and they can tune the car to run at a specific operating temperature to get the most power out of the car. (as I mentioned before if it runs too cool, the car will run a bit more rich than normal)

Why in the world are you running coolant in Florida? Let alone 50/50

you mean antifreeze.

BTWs, is it me, or does this reroute put the top rad inlet on the wrong side? If not, I would think this, and any, hot side setup would have to make one hell of a bend to get to the upper rad nipple. I like it, but need more clear info to really like it.

http://iscracing.net/images/turbo%20engine2.JPG

it also gets rid of the heater core...

Welcome to 1985. You should probably tell Garrett, TiAL, HKS, Greddy, Porsche, Audi, VW, subaru, Mitsubishi, Honda, GM, Ford, and everyone else on earth that they're doing it wrong because water-cooled turbos are nothing new.

Until it drops below target temp.
The amount of heat going into the water has everything to do with how much and how fast the water moves.
The "choke point" or restricter I referred to previously in the Risi F430 is an NA car. Running warm-up enrichment is more than "a little rich" and running "a little rich" means fatter than 11.2:1, which is going to leave power on the table, and dump all kinds of fuel into the engine oil.

If I ran my car with no thermostat it would either overheat on the street or run cold on the track.

So would removing the coolant lines from the turbo help keep coolant temps lower overall? Would I want to do this? I'm not really up to speed on cooling methods, but I am open to learning.

sorry I worded that poorly, the coolant doesn't cool the turbo, it actually cools the oil that cools the turbo.


yes if you have a thermostat in there.

last I checked a stock miata isn't as fine tuned as any F430 and i also doubt the F430 has as many cooling issues as a 20 year old car with a small stock radiator.

yes, your car, I dont see why you're arguing every possible point that I bring up on here, the thread is about ways to cool your engine better and I'm simply providing a way. Chris101 even has guages in her car to prove the system works in a Naturally Aspirated car as she has the same setup as me.

This is not about a stock Miata, its about a 200whp Miata. This thread is about "best methods to cool down a motor" and we've already stated the "best."

IIT: we need less:magna: and more :vash:

Oh god what have I created

LOL :noob:
Please step into the 21st century before you start calling people out.

http://www.turbobygarrett.com/turbob...R_466541_4.htm

i thought removing the rubber seal from the firewall at the rear of the enginebay where it meets the bonnet/hood would be a good thing as when your driving the air rushing over the car will pull the hot air outfrom under the bonnet over the windshield and away from the hot engine bay no?

my previous car a renault 5 gt turbo are famous for overheating issues and people said to remove the thermostat i tried that and it never reached operating temperature car performance wasnt that great i didnt like it it didint feel right.also the tuners said something about running without a thermostat would cause problems of air in the system and localised hot points i honestly cant remember ok il shut up somebody slap me! the motto os the story dont run without a thermostatits not good!

i'm a noob here, so i might get my shit slapped for explaining this wrong, but i'll try to clear up the second part of your post.

some people have explained in this thread, with varying degrees of clarity, the function of a thermostat.

It opens when the coolant reaches a certain point, allowing it to flow through the radiator and return to the engine. When the coolant has returned to a normal operating temp, the thermostat closes, until the coolant is hot again. at which point the cycle repeats.

when your car is starting cold, the thermostat will stay closed, to hold the coolant in the engine, and help the car come up to operating temperature more quickly. The problems you describe are due to the car never being able to come up to operating temperature, i have no idea what the deal with air bubbles is, and i can only assume the problem of hot points would be due to uneven coolant flow path with the thermostat always open.


and the area infront of the windshield, and behind the hood is a high pressure area from what i understand. i do not understand the dynamics of airflow around the car enough to say if connecting the engine bay to that space would be good or bad.

Bad, unless you are connecting it to the compressor inlet a-la cowl CAI, but then again that is not really connecting it to the engine bay.