Cabrio cooling and heating

Here's the Ford sierra radiator in its approximate final position. I will make up a frame for it to mount to, which will pick up on some existing holes at the front of the chassis.

I will have to do some more cutting so that the pipes have more room and the air can escape more easily.

Change of plan to a bigger radiator!

The Pace radiator is a very tight fit in there!

I bought this unknown radiator at a kit car show for £5, it will make an ideal chargecooler rad!

The chargecooler rad fits snugly in front of the Pace main one. I'm welding in an upper bar across the inner wings for the top mounts.

Nice big fans came wiht the radiator and are stock Ford Sierra Cosworth.

The lower mounts are welded up from steel angle and have 'bobbin' rubber bushes that fit through a pair of existing holes in the chassis. I will be fully welding/neatening it all up and rubber mounting the chargecooler rad.

Where I cut out the spare wheel well for the radiator I flanged the edges. I'll insert rivnuts along the edge to screw on an aluminium top cover.

After lots of thinking I have decided to go with steel coolant lines. They are cheap to build, easy to weld together and bend in any format, bleeding points are relatively easy to install and they can have fixing brackets welded straight on to them. I am thinking about getting them galvanised to last longer.

Here you can see the initial tacked together complete runs. After my speedster I was not keen to use the stock subaru thermostat again, I used an external thermostat on my libra and it worked very well so I am using the same one here.

Here you can see the full runs under the car

lines loop up nicely to the radiator

access to the suspension bolts is still fine

Thermostat acts in place of a bend on the reveresed coolant manifold of the engine, then across to the coolant line which runs down the left side of the floor.

Adapter piece from the manifold converts from the engine's 38mm pipework down the thermostat and main line size od 32mm, it also incorporates a bleed line which will go back to the coolant header tank. You can also see how I mounted the return rigid section to the engine with a piece of flex to account for engine movement.

Here's how the outlet pipe drops down just infront of the trailing arm. I mounted them high enough so that they will not get in the way of a 944 anti-roll bar.

I decided against the coolant support as in the above picture after experiencing some oil seepage from the rocker cover. There was a handy unused boss on the engine block so I used that instead...

VW polo heater matrix/blower fan will be mounted to access panel and will blow in to the existing ducting behind the dash. I will fabricate an intake for the fan so it draws in air from the scuttle grill.

I wasn't overly happy with the original body mods to go behind the radiator, now the body is off the chassis I have better access to do a nicer job...

Front section of spare wheel well filled in with new beadrolled panel and framework is now being made up with captive nuts so a removable cover can go over the top.

I added some fillet pieces at the top and filled in the sides to seal off the radiator from the underbonnet area.

The pace chargecooler only had mounts at the top, so I've welded in a tube with tabs for the top mounts and a Y shaped piece at the bottom of each side that the radiator drops into. The tube is covered with some rubber tube to give a nice cushioned mounting.

and all mounted...

Steel cover to go over the radiators made up and all edges folded back on themselves to avoid sharp edges and scratching the body later on. It also stiffens up the panel nicely. Once I've welded on the front valance panel I'll add an extra couple of fixing points at the front.