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I've decided to build an overkill cooling system for my competition drift car as I have a pretty good system ATM yet still gets hot after hard laps on hot days.

So what I have planned is to put a large radiator inthe boot with sealed ducting in and out and two large fans pulling air out. I plan on laying the radiator almost flat on floor with a slight upward angle, air will be taken in from each rear 1/4 window which will be replaced with vents and ducted to a single Y joiner when then feeds the sealed duct to radiator.

The radiator I had in mind was an all alloy vx v8 radiator..they are huge along with two zirgo 3600cfm 16 sands behind it. I'll use a header tank in the boot and the engine vary to prevent air pockets.

can anyone see any potential issues?

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That will work. Minimum 300mm diam duct from each window. Where is the fuel cell? If underfloor, then you are going to have to make your exit vent in the rear panel between the taillights. There's low pressure behind the car there anyway, but perhaps less so when sideways.

Stand the radiator up as close to vertical as you can. You'll hate yourself trying to duct in and out of it if it is lying down at a low angle.

trust me ive tried a lot of things over the past few years and my current set up is as good as it gets. RB in an s chassis is always difficult to keep cool. it works fine for 90% of the time but low speed, high rpm, hot weather and continuous laps sees the temps sky rocket

If your laying it flat you'll need air bleeds on the top of the tanks. Header tank in the boot is not nessiary. It would be far better if you bought a PWR core and built you own end tanks that have a deliberate high point folded into them with a -6an air bleed fitting.

Lotus' have a frontal radiator with bleeds at the highest point. It makes life much easier if you use an evacuation filler when putting the coolant in.

Sucks the system into a vacuum and that same vacuum is used to draw coolant back into the system.

I've seen a couple of failed boot radiators that we've looked at fixing for customers but its usually easier to either redo the whole setup or go back to a proper air dam/frontal radiator setup.

The big things are air bleed points.

Cheap radiators.

The factory water pump won't be up to the job. It will circulate the water too slowly over that distance.

Hot spots in the system where air sits and steams.

The fan setups. The only thing you are doing essentially is removing the intercooler from in front of the radiator and increasing capacity. If you have a good quality cooler now then it probably isn't an air flow restriction.

If possible have you ducting coming from the underside the fans blowing up through the radiator and the shroud venting out from the topside.

Hot air rises so with low road speed your going to have radiating heat going upwards into the ducting channels only to be sucked back down through the hot radiator via the fans.

Yes the hot air should be sucked out but the heat will radiate upwards even when air flow is downwards.

Put an air temp sensor in the coupling you fabricate and monitor the heat inside there to determine if its working. Ideally ambient is best obviously

Your best source of info is actually to look at as many lotus exige setups as possible. They are done perfectly with air feeds from the bottom, coulings venting into negative pressure air flow, air bleeds at all critical points etx

Years ago that fella from Nispro had an I think S14 and he made a way for some of the post rad air to spin off the tips of the mechanical fan and ducted this air out through a hole in the bonnet .

I wouldn't think you're running the RBs std fan but it may be possible to do something with elec fans . I don't think the radiator cares where the hot air goes as long as it can go somewhere so more can be pulled through the core .

A .

Mate i just had a brain fart......

we have been drifting 500hp s1x Rb power cars for years here in WA and we have sorted the cooling problems... you neeeeeeeed to f**k off those thermo fans they just dont work... then use the old nidssan clutch fan and shroud, koyo rad and oil cooler (lots of guys put them in the corners but there gay and hit shit sooo i have a put mine inbetween the rad and FMIC and i cant get my oil temp over 90deg)...

and the biggest thing is fuel... we run e42 (E85 mixed 1/2 with BP98) Jewmix but E85 is even better.

oh and btw we had a guy do the rear radiator setup on a s13... it never worked just overheated constantly... he gave up and did what we where all doin

Edited by britz1

I have all that and it still won't work :( have clutch fan and new blades. quality radiator and everything else you mentioned and it works great but couldn't handle multiple laps of WA heat

hmmm well my car has a cold air unduction pipe and a 12L jun sump maby its the big sump that did the goods... took longer to heat up the oil.... oh and btw i was at adgp in my R33 and it was overheating during prac... but it runs BP98 and adgp was stupid hot this year and prity hard on the cars

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