That depends on whether I tightened up the cover bolts enough on the dayOriginally Posted by Clouder_sx
That depends on whether I tightened up the cover bolts enough on the day
Sidewaysfun recently bought a Koyo. You can get them through SRB.
The thing is, they're not a lot of money for the quality. It's more that the Apex/DW radiators are not a lot of money full stop. That said I have an Apex radiator and while it's not the greatest quality in the world, it lined up and fitted first time and keeps the water temperatures comfortable. I have over 400bhp and after 8/9 hard, hard laps of a long circuit like Bedford I am just breaking 90 degrees and a half a cool down lap sees that back in the 70's.
Last edited by piman2k; 12-06-2013 at 07:52.
Yeah I got mine from FRSport from the States. As said though, think a few of the traders in here can get hold of them too. You're probably looking at around the £400 mark for one.
That's what I was thinking. It's not clear to me what the extra money gets you in the case of a Koyo, apart from some tidier welds and a more attractive looking item? I can't imagine it can cool significantly better than what you're reporting here, and if it does, I probably don't need it to. If an Apex keeps your 400bhp beast in the 90s then it should be more than adequate for mine at <280bhp.
It's probably more consistency in build quality than anything else.
I've found a lot of cheap parts go like this:
10 people buy cheap
Of those 10, 6 people are happy that it fits perfectly and does everything it says on the tin. Of The other 4 people, 3 find they have to trim and modify things to get it to fit but otherwise works fine and 1 person gave up.
I had a cheap radiator on my S13. It really didn't fit. At all. I had to cut and tweak quite a lot to get it to fit at all and it still sat wonky and needed pipework made up. I wouldn't do the same thing again I'd just buy something that I know is higher quality from the outset and avoid 3 hours of irritation and bleeding.
I think you'll be fine, but that's not to knock the Koyo. It's a wonderfully well put together piece and will do the job reliably and well. But if you can't justify it, I can't knock mine either. If you're still looking in a few months give me a shout as I'm changing my radiator set up.
I would say that's spot on and the general theme, a great explanation.
Top tips Piman and Zep, thanks.
If I get an Apex and it doesn't fit straight out the box, but is sold as being a straight swap, it will be sent straight back. So in that respect I shouldn't really end up in the unlucky 4 in your example. In fact I could buy one Apex, throw it in the bin, buy another, and still have £40 change compared to buying a Koyo.
That's not to say I'm not knocking quality items or spending money, but in this case, for me, on a finite budget, a Koyo doesn't seem like good value. The £220 I'll save with an Apex can go towards an oil cooler setup.
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In other news I've been ripping out sound-deadening aplenty this evening. Tedious job but most of it is out now. Lots of residue to clean up, however.
Anyone know an easy way to strip seam-sealer? Where it was glued to the sound deadening is a bit messy now so I will probably get it off and reapply some fresh sealer, just to be neat.
Again, I would leave it there. You'll never get it down as thoroughly as factory. Just spray the interior a dark colour. My 2 pence.
You'll need something along the lines of toluene I would imagine but don't hold me to that. Stuff id nasty anyway (toluene) so I'd just leave it.
I had the interior of mine painted with a thin layer of something akin to stone chip and then a matt black on top. Turned out more of a grey in the end but helped to dull some of the noises out for not much of a penalty and looked pretty decent besides.
I use a wire brush attachment on a drill or angle grinder to take off the seam sealer.
I haven't found a better method yet.
I'm now thinking maybe I'll just try and tidy it up and smear some tigerseal on top where it's been damaged by the sound deadening removal. There's one bit where I can see rust underneath that'll definitely have to come off.
Wire brush on a drill it is, cheers!
So when I bought this car, one of the first jobs I was going to do was change the wheels.
Almost a year later, it's finally happened!
Before:
After:
Fitment:
Front - Rota Grid 17 x 8.5 ET 30 with 5mm spacer.
Rear - Rota Grid Drift 17 x 9 ET 25, no spacer.
Black on black, and Rotas, is hardly going to win awards for originality but bhe idea here is function over form. Plus I think it looks smart.
I've kept the same tyre widths I had before (225 & 245) because the grip balance felt good on track, but gone down an inch in diameter and up in tyre profile. The idea is that the bigger tirewall will allow, at some point, fairly stiff coilovers to be fitted without losing traction over bumps. PLus smaller wheels are lighter, etc. etc.
Also replaced the crappy D1 alloy wheel nuts with steel jobbies for peace of mind.
I've never put different wheels on a car before, well pleased with the result. Though I haven't driven it yet as the car has no seats (still prepping for the roll-cage install).
You don't have to be original to be good, you just have to not copy directly. I think it looks great Dave
Thanks mate!You don't have to be original to be good, you just have to not copy directly. I think it looks great Dave
An eventful few weeks.
Having lived with a stash of shiney new bits in a spare room for quite a while (having a 10-month old baby tends to consume a lot of time), and with a trackday at Cadwell Park looming large, I finally pulled my finger out.
First I wanted to address the cooling issue that I experienced at Castle Coombe.
Old radiator:
New Radiator:
Can't believe the difference in core thickness, gone from about 10mm stock to a 56mm Koyo.
Thanks to Sumo Power for sourcing one in Europe, for a pretty bargainous price of £241.
So far so good.
For a few weeks I then tried fitting the cage. Problem was, I was mostly doing it in the odd hour in the evenings at the end of a long day, with it starting to get dark, and on my own ... anyway, excuses over, it was a bugger to get in. Eventually though, through some trial an error, with a bit of encouragement from monsieur Blaktooth, I test fitted it.
In parallel with this I deliberated for ages about how to mount my bucket seats. I eventually plumped on some Apex rails and, on receipt, promptly attacked them with a grinder. My plan was to fit the Cobra Suzuka entirely between the rails, allowing the bottom of the seat to be lower than the rails themselves. This involved making some brackets out of some angle:
You can see one bracket has the seat attachment bolt below it, one above. Then these bolt to the Apexes. I'd ground away some of the brackets on the rails themselves to give clearance for the seat to slide past. Also had to slightly elongate one of the mounting holes; then a lick of paint, and bosh:
As you can see, being a short arse (well, 5'10") I still need the seat to clear the crossbar in the floorpan, so the front is higher than the rear by about 3cm or so.
With 48 hours to go before the drive to Cadwell, I eventually got the Fabricage 6-pointer bolted in:
Annoyingly, it'll all have to come out to get the spreader plates welded in, but I'll need to build up the motivation for that!
24 hours to go (with a full time job in between) and I need to get the car rebuilt pretty urgently. Dash and various trim got cut up and returned to the car without any snags.
MSAR supplied me with Schroth Prof-II 6-point harnesses, which I'd settled on after my experience of the 4-point version in my Lotus. They also sorted me out some mounting bits. Guy on the phone (Malcolm I think) was very helpful and knowledgeable and even gave me a cheeky 10% discount, so highly recommended.
Crotch strap mountings:
I'm using the seatbelt and seat mounting points on the transmission tunnel and sill for the lap belts, which isn't probably the optimum positioning, but they're not far off, and should be strong.
Drivers seat and harness in. Using stock passenger seat for now until I get some more brackets made up:
Seat fits really well. Unfortunatley it's about 2cm off-centre (unavoidable given the rail mounting point positions), but I had 4-5inches between the top of my helmet and the roof lining, so well pleased. Here's a pic from the rear; bit hard to make out but the seat is only mm from the floorpan, and the seat can still adjust fore/aft by a good 6 inches or so. Well pleased.
Close up of the mounts from one side:
Still need to prep and paint the floorpan, and sort the passenger seat, but the interior was at least functional for Cadwell. It was now 6pm and I needed to drive to Lincoln (3 hours away) for an overnight stay before the trackday the next day. So I downed tools, threw some pants in a bag, and hit the road...
The drive up to Lincoln was the first time the car had moved more than 10 yards in months, and the first time it had moved at all with the cage, seats, harnesses, rebuilt dash etc. Literally, the first test drive to try it all out was this 3 hour trip. Needless to say, I took a few tools as insurance.
The new bits of the car were fine, but the AVCR was showing weird boost readings. I just kind of ignored this, assuming I had dislodged something electrical during all the work, and all looked good for Cadwell the next day (yesterday).
The day was going really well and I was enjoying the car and track for the first few sessions, when my mates observed the Chav Wagon was sounding like a jet engine. I hadn't noticed from the car, mainly because I'd fitted the bung to quiten down the exhaust, so I'd just assumed the extra turbo noise was just because I couldn't normally hear it.
I was wrong.
Towards lunch time the car lost power and started sounding like a tractor, and my coolant temp gauge started flickering all over the place. I hastily pulled in to the paddock.
The flickering coolant gauge was confusing and, having recently changed the rad, I wondered if I had a coolant issue and the car was badly overheating. However the coolant was fine and eventually I noticed that the ignition control unit (I think that's what it is) was now a box of molten plastic; pretty soon after I realised the turbo gasket had been blowing a good'un. I'd routed the coolant sender cable round there too; those cables were now toast and that was why the gauge was all over the place.
Some melted stuff: You can't really see it, but the ignition thingy box is on the right, and the cover is gone. You could see the PCB exposed.
Here it is:
The red thing in the foreground is the heat shield we bodged out of a coke can, just to get me home:
I trimmed back some wiring, re-attached a hose that had popped off that connects the turbo outlet to the boost solenoid, tidied some bits up, rigged the heat shield and let everything cool down. Suprisingly, it then ran fine (albeit a bit tractor-like given the turbo gasket leak). I gues the ignition controller didn't like being hot, but once cooled it recovered normal functionality.
I'm not sure if the hose that had popped off was symptom or cause; I also suspect the exhaust bung may have speeded the gasket's demise. We pulled the bung out just in case the gasket was making things worse.
With the engine running fine, albeit still blowing noisily, I limped home the 4 hour drive from Cadwell Park to Bristol without further incident. Bit gutted I only did a few sessions on track given all the last minute hard work, but also glad nothing too serious broke. On the plus side, the new rad seems to have sorted the temp issues, with water barely creeping above 100 deg and oil stable 120-130deg, and the interior mods were absolutely spot on.
So if anyone has an ignition control box thingy, plus the connector and a length of the loom from the plug on each side (both of my connectors are melted), let me know how much you want for them.
Now I have to decide whether I can be arsed trying to change the gasket myself. Seems like a right faff of a job. Thoughts? Encouragement?
Only just seen your project thread!
Car looks like a cracker!
I do really want the Apex half cage but i need to make sure that my seat can go back far enough as i'm quite tall.
That's really unlucky with the melting of the ignition amp thingy. Only seen that happen with big top mount turbo's. Is definitely worth moving everything away from the hot side of the engine...as I'm sure you are now aware.
Have you welded the cage mounting plates in then? All work out OK with the cage in the end? Mine was a snug fit which is good in my book.
The wiring for the ignition amp should allow you to move it and put it behind the dash if you wanted, Iv done it with mine because I suspected the same thing could happen once I get it on track. Mine has had alot of wiring, but I seem to remember that all looking factory and still being long enough to get inside the car.
At least you got it on track, I like your attitude and there's no point crying over it is there!
Not welded in yet, didn't have time. Need to whip everything back out and get my friendly next door neighbour to have a go with a MIG, but I'm going to wait til I've fixed the engine bay up.
The cage was a snug fit but the key I found was dissassembling the brackets on the end of the dash bar (as I notched rather than cut through the bar); this allowed it to flex back enough for the A-pillar cage bar to press back against it and into the main hoop bit. Then I just about managed to reassemble the dash bracket with the cage in place. It wasn't easy but now I know the secret I reckon I'll be able to get it out and in again pretty easily, even on my own.
Cheers mate. Not sure about the cage thing - how tall are you? I'm 5'10" and the seat is leant back at a reasonable angle (say about 20degrees) and I still have a few inches until my head would be under the main cage hoop.
Yep, gonna fix it up and give it another good thrashing! I was thinking about relocating the ignition amp and boost solenoid next to the ABS pump and building a little protective box out of this stuff (like I saw in Blaktooth's build):
https://www.merlinmotorsport.co.uk/s...on/heat-shield
Any cabling in the area that I can't move I may use something like this:
https://www.merlinmotorsport.co.uk/p...e-30mm-ctek-30
But I'm also looking at the idea of using a VAG coilpack kit that apparently removes the need for the ignition amp altogether, like in this thread:
http://www.sxoc.com/vbb/showthread.p...ight=splitfire
...Though someone local has already offered me an ignition amp so it'll be a lot cheaper and easier to just repair and relocate the stock system. Just need to get hold of the bits of the looms with the connecters to replace the melted wires.
I also want a quiter exhaust. I currently have a silenced stimpson decat with 3" downpipe and 3" catback ebay jobbie. Want something quiet enough to not upset any trackday organisers but still free flowing. Anyone got any recommendations?
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