Replacing OE oil/coolant heat exchanger with a sandwich plate?
 

Yo,

At the moment I have the standard oil/coolant heat exchanger on a 1994 block, on top of this I have a GREX thermostat sandwich plate for the Setrab oil cooler, then the oil filter on top. There's basically no room left to get the filter in and out. I have a 1999 head, intake manifold and IM brace.

I was thinking it may be possible to remove the heat exchanger, then re-use the nut to hold down the sandwich plate instead of using the supplied extension fitting. I'm hoping this would mean I can leave the threaded pipe alone lengthwise.

Has anyone done this or do you think it could possibly work? It looks like the sandwich plate is about 3/4 of the thickness of the heat exchanger.

Thanks in advance

I was able to get my phone in the area to take a pic:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1363001357

Not sure if it is obvious or not but it's a black block and black filter. :)

Most (including me) remove the IM brace. I've never heard of an issue with removing the brace, including lots of guys that track.

Besides seeming to increase the likelyhood of breaking the throttle body shaft.

Doesn't make sense. TB shaft is structurally supported by the TB itself. You could take a sledge hammer to the IM and it wouldn't do a thing to the TB or its shaft. ???

Problems with an unsupported IM would appear at the head due to the moment arm. But, I've never heard of any issues like that. Savington doesn't use an IM brace, and he drives his car pretty darn hard.

Shaft, head, hard -- mt.net trifecta.

Does Savington use the stock TB?

To OP:

You can't reuse the nut for two reasons:
1) the threaded rod (from the block) will be too long for the Sandwhich plate + oil filter
2) the nut is pretty big, It doesn't sit flush at all on my mocal plate. Not sure if its important, but it didn't inspire confidence.

That's different brace you are referring to. That brace is the black piece with the two bolts thats under the throttle body. More commonly recognized by the ground wire attached to one of the bolts.