Ok so on sat the plastic tank on top of my radiator cracked. It’s not major and I can still drive it but starting to get things wet under hood. I want to build a diy kit and I about had a heart attack when I saw what they were asking for radiators, stock around $200 and aftermarket(what I really want) around $500.

I was thinking and remembered my honda buddy bought a 2.5 in core radiator for his civic for $125. They are about half as wide as the stock miata piece. Got to looking and found plenty on ebay. I started thinking I could mount my IC next to it the way he did on his honda. Felt like a genius! Then I did some searching and found out that people had already done it. Now I just know it can be done and on the cheep!

My real question is about corner weight and as to which side I should mount my radiator. It is a stock 95 R and I weigh about 210lbs. I assume I should mount it on the passenger side but wanted to check with you guys first.

I should get a radiator this week sometime and will take pics and keep you guys updated with my progress.

 

yes- pax side- but your IC is probably going to balance it out like one large radiator. So I'd lean towards making the pipe routing the priority- whatever makes it easiest.

 

Where in Atlanta are you located m2?

 

I was seriously considering this, with my fmic I was going to mount the civic just left (toward passenger side) of center and route my pipe on either side.

 

The i/c-radiator idea sounds cool but if your looking for a cheap radiator www.car-part.com has new koyos for 110.00 that are for an auto car. Im pretty sure the radiators from automatic miatas have way more cooling capacity and are a direct replacement.

 

Decatur.
It would be interesting to see how this works out vs. stick the IC in front of a full size rad.

 

heh, thought i posted earlier ... guess i didnt press send lol. Sounds like a really cool idea and it seems like ive heard of it being done before as well. like M2cupcar, I would be interested in how this setup would work vs. a traditional FMIC full radiator. Also, you could easily mount a fan over the IC core and have it running continuously while a second fan could turn on when radiator temps got too high.

 

Well a standard 1.8 honda radiator cools effieintly enough for a honda...why not a miata.

 

here is a shot of someone who did this with a probe IC and Honda Rad.

more pics in my 1.6 gallery
http://jazz.sdsc.edu/photo/index.php...a/engines/1.6/

if you do a search on m.net for honda rad you should be able to find this guy, I think thats where I found it.


from what Ive heard the honda's coolant route is more efficient (maybe most?) and the smaller rad works for that reason.

 

wich radiator was used in that build, a civic radiator?

 

Here is my progress so far.

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2558829

Notice that I built it all to hang in the factory hangers without drilling or cutting a single pice of my rare R.

 

doesn't the fact that the A/C condensor is in the way really effect the efficiency of things? I really like the idea of this but feel that it would work a lot better without that thing blocking a lot of the air.

 

When I build my turbo ic setup the ic will have a fan behind it and my ac will still work. It will keep my intake pipes short and my car will be a little stealthy.

 

any thought to maybe keeping some sort of insulating barrier between the 200* radiator and the cool IC so there isn't so much heat transfer?

 

no but thats a great idea

 

just throwing out thoughts to help! I really do like this idea and you're right about keeping it very stealth since you won't even see the IC outside the car. Thats actually one thing I like about my car now without the IC, the total stealthness, however only 6psi is possible this way lol.

 

Can't you use two radiators, one for IC, one for an actual radiator? Or are the passages too big/small?

 

Why only 6PSI ?

 

because I have no intercooler at the moment and no water injection or anything else right now so I'm limited to 6psi

 

Ah the same situation as myself !
I'm going to be getting an IC and some other extras this month
Also going to be taking out the AC & PS if I can get the time
This setup looks very good, a very nice & clean install. I really like the way the IC piping is small and neat.