Reroute help
 

Aright, i'm gettting ready to move down to virginia beach for school (going to an automotive tech school) and i was wondering if there is anyone in the area that has done a coolant reroute and/or would be willing to help me out with one in a month or so ('90 1.6 greddy)

anyone else in the area let me know as i wanna try to get with as many miataphiles there as possible b/c there are NONE where im living now.

thanks
brian

I don't know anything about the reroute, but I can't imagine there's anything to it. Are you buying a kit/part or just fabbing it?

I don't think anyone makes a kit (suprisingly...could be wrong though). It doesn't look to hard to do just a pain in the ass to relocate the thermostat housing to the back of the engine. I haven't done it yet but it just looks like no fun.

pretty much my feelings on it....not hard, just a long/tedious project

Your going to have to look overseas for a reroute kit. I believe that they are the only ones that do that in kit form.

LINK?

I did a reroute in my car but I did not move the thermostat. I just bypassed the mixing manifold and dumped the water from the back of the head into the top of the radiator (after the thermostat). Actually, I sent 85% of the water that way (from the head) and the other 15% through the turbo and then into the top of the radiator.

My website is down now but I think I have some info on it somewhere on there. If not, bug me about it and I will get it posted.

It is simplier to route the return along the drivers side because you can reuse your 1.8 water neck. If you don't like that (or have a hot turbo in the way) you need a different waterneck or start modifying things. I made a 1" adapater plate which housed my sensors and heater core fitting and used a 1.6 waterneck to point my return along the passenger side. It's tight back there squeezing around the intake manifold/etc. If I had to do it over again I probably would use a hard line along the valve cover on the driver's side.

Did anyone see great benefits from doing the reroute. Temperature wise I mean. I know that it creates flow past all of the cylinders and that is always a good thing. Does this help with keeping everything running the same because now all the cylinders are the same temperature or atleast close to being so?

My car overheats with my reroute, never did before. I contribute this to a clogged radiator though. I did not flush the 1.8 block out before installing and apparently it was full of somehting thick. I'm on my 5th time flushing my coolant and it still gets dark brown within a week. :eek:

Robert- if you didn't move the thermostat to the rear to keep the coolant in the head when the engine is cold, how is start up? Do you still have coolant coming out of the front (OE route) of the head?

I'll bet there's more options for sending the coolant out the back of the head via a "primary" sized bung. I'm using a cap off an older 626 to send it around the intake side under the manifold. I enlarged and tapped a sensor fitting for the heater feed BUT need to move it on the other side of the Tstat if I want quicker heat. Just wasn't room at the time, but I can now ditch the big fan Tswitch and use that for the heater. I'm also using a 323 fitting for the pump-to-rad hose that gets it away from the downpipe. - rob

I did the reroute at the same time that I put on the turbo, so I have no frame of reference other than my motor doesn't get any hotter than it did NA.

I routed from the back to the front on the intake side and put the themostat in that line as you can see in my vb garage picture.

That's rough, I would definitely have to figure a way to run mass amounts of water through the block before I did it. I guess just taking that plate off the back and running a ton of water through the upper rad hose would do the trick if you have good water pressure. Maybe followed with some rad, flush through the entire system afterwards. I'd do everything I could to make sure there wasn't a bunch of crap in it.

turbotim- Are you going to have your rad acid flushed or something to clear that up?

m2cupcar asked about my reroute in the vb garage. Basically, I blocked the front thermostat port, took the flow out the back and put the thermostat in the line I brought along the intake manifold with hard hoses and nylon elbows to the radiator.

The back outlet is a welded up modification of a thermostat cover to supply the heater core and a fitment for the temperature sensor.

Nope, the coolant does pretty much what it wants to out the back of the head but I haven't had any problems with a cold startup.

I have the front piped up the same, the rear splits off an goes to the upper radiator hose (back into the rad) and the other split goes to the turbo coolant line and into the upper rad hose. Horrible amounts of hose clamps...

Robert- if you're running the rear outlet to the bottom rad hose, that's the same thing as the heater core running back to the water pump. The difference is you get no hot coolant to your heater core (which is probably gone anyway ;) ). I think the key to the reroute is closing off the front primary to the rad (as in olderguy's). That forces the primary coolant flow out the rear of the head. - rob

No, everything goes to the upper hose, not the lower hose. I have measured the flow out the back and it is substantial (don't have my notes sitting in front of me right now).

:rolleyes: doh- how'd I miss that... Ok- so you had a measurable increase running the rear to the top hose. That means you have nothing running to the heater core correct?

Heater core? What's that???

silly me :gay: