...aaaaaaand 6 months later..the coolant reroute is in.....kinda.
 

Well. i've been a bit busy today...finally got around to installing the coolant reroute. Let's see, I picked up the spacer from out (now missing) ReverendGreg back at the Flyin' Miata Comes to Atlanta Dinner the Friday night before The Mitty :lol:



Took me 5 hours (1 hour did include prepping, checking over, preassembling some parts while the car cooled down from running a couple errands). Getting the heater hose/temp. sensor housing out was actually easy. Once the stock stuff was out, I had a very fun time getting the stud out of the head on the back.....oh so much fun. Once out, I had even more fun trying to fit the spacer, Kia neck and the gaskets together and keeping everything aligned while I tried to get the bolts started in their threads.....if I ever have to do this again, i'll take the option to have teeth removed without anesthesia...man that sucked. I was smart enough to cover all those nasty hose clamps on the heater lines with a cloth so I didn't look like some Emo-loser who tried cutting up his arms...but I did manage to split the end of my right index finger pretty good halfway though the process...so working with it all bandaged up wasn't making things any easier. I managed to FINALLY get everything lines up and tightened up on the back and everything from there went very easy...it was just running the piping from the radiator to the new waterneck. The radiator hose I grabbed from AutoZone got cut up and I found some 1.25" steel couplers in the plumbing dept. at Lowe's. I'll post up pics of that particular part soon. But you can see it in the joint between the two 90* bends right off the radiator.



Once everything was in, I filled up the radiator only to find the spacer on the front was leaking. Fixed that and found one of the gaskets on the spacer on the back of the head was leaking....great. Since I don't have a way to go get one, i'll have to wait until tomorrow to get a couple new gaskets and get them in and take the car for a spin to make sure everything is OK.





Looks nice and clean



http://img2.pict.com/11/bf/2c/1674406/0/800/reroute.jpg



Quite a bit of room between the re-routed upper hose and the intake pipe. A lot of cars have a problem here with the two hoses being all up in eachother's business....which transfers heat into the intake.



http://img2.pict.com/40/75/f9/167440...keradiator.jpg



And the spacer assembly on the back of the head...rather hard to get a good picture of.



http://img2.pict.com/95/1b/da/167440...spacerneck.jpg

Who's kit is that for the reroute?

Thats how mine went although it only took me about an hour total. My stud didnt give me any issues and I have some really nice ratcheting wrenches that helped a lot. Worked great for a track day but afterwords when I took the engine out to repair an oil leak, I found the lower/passenger bolt loose. Although you can get a wrench in there to tighten it, I'm not sure I'd trust that method to torque the bolt properly.

The kit us all custom/mix-and-match DIY parts. The psacer itself was mechined by a member on a loval miata forum...the rest of the parts were gathered by yours truely.

Excuse me as I have been drinking...see thread in off topics senction.

Shit looks cool with the hood openm. If I use those fucking shitty clamps the Mazda uses on the hoses...what are they..those fuckers that like to pop off and hit you in the face whne you take them off with pliars....you fuckers know what im talking about....yes? Anyway, If I had used them, this should would look straight up OEM....biches.

What you mean now missing?
-G-

I hadn't seen you post in quote in sometinme foool ;)


OK...i think it's time I go to bed lol..mo offemse Greg....In my driunkn state, I had't deen you post in a min (damn that took me 10min to type lol)\ i'm going tpo bed)

Yeah I had to turn off the Internet over the summer,I would have had my 8yr old on heaven666.org all day!
-G-

Alrighty. I took everything back apart to replace the gaskets on the spacer. This time I used my head and moved the cc throttle line, the normal throttle cable out of the way, pulled that funny spacer/ground thing off the back of the head and pushed the oil feed line out of the way. Things went quick(er) this time. Even though the NAPA brand gasket had only been in there for 24hrs. I still had to take a blade to remove the excess funk that was left over..wtf? That took most of the time. This time I used a much nicer gasket from Fel-Pro. Once everything was back in, I filled it up and took off. No leaks!

The temp gauge does not even make it halfway up now...more like 11 o'clock...probably because I'm using a 180* t-stat. I'm also going to assume i'll see the needle move between 11 and 12 as temps go up and down from driving and whatnot. Now i'm really looking forward to the next time I get out on track and don't haveto worry about temps at all!

Hey,I would like to see the picture of the spacer from the drivers side,if it is able to be seen.
-G-

Is the reroute kit worth the money?? Meaning will it truly keep temp low, providing you have a nice radiator, oil cooler and intercooler... and proper ducting? I just dropped the transmission tonight to install an Exedy 3puck and ACT prolite wheel... and it'd be a real easy job to install this now with the tranny out of the way. In a couple weeks a T3 is going on and my '91 is strictly road race... got it for doing Barber's here in Brimingham and overheating will be a big issue I need to address, especailly during the summer heat. I'm thinking of doing anything I can, including water/meth injection... and installing the IC horizontally where the hood catch is... and going with hood pins. I don't want to block the radiator with the IC if I can avoid it.

There are a ton of threads on here about it, do a quick search. But ultimately the answer is yes. The main goal is about proper coolant distribution through the block so you don't overheat the rearmost cylinders, which is lacking in OEM form.