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Honda 1/2 Radiator Install

This write up is for those that want to install the “Honda ½ Radiator”. A great mod for turbo or NA. For turbo, it allows room in the engine bay and for NA it allows a large “cold air” opening. You can install it on either side of the car; passenger or driver side.

First you need to remove the old radiator;

It’s very simple to take out. Just empty the coolant system and pull off the upper and lower radiator hoses. Then pull off the two brackets on top of the radiator (4 bolts). At this point, the radiator will pull right out, but first you must unplug the fans. Now simply pull up them radiator. It is housed in rubber grommets on the bottom. It will pull right out of these. Then put the radiator to the side (I only had one fan on);

In this write up, we are going to install the ½ radiator on the driver side. I will use this to help me have room for my turbo install.

The only prep that I did on the radiator was I cut the filler neck off (we don’t need it for our cars. We have a filler and overflow tube on the thermostat housing). I cut it off and welded in a plate. It’ll look a little like this;

Now we have to set a base for the bottom of the radiator. On the bottom of the new radiator are some “locating” pins. These we are just going to slip into the old brackets that we took off the top. Simply set the radiator in place ( I used the driver’s side of the old opening to line up with). When you have it where you want, just go below and hold the old top bracket in place (with the bottom post slipped into the old rubber grommet), them mark where you’re holes are going (I haven’t got pics of all this, because I thought about doing the write up when I already had the radiator in, lol). When done and screwed in place, it will look like this;

You can see where I used my screws to go in the old holes of the bracket. You can attach many different ways. I just used 3/8 self tapping screws.

Then do the same thing on the other side. Put the bracket up in place, make your marks, and attach how you like. It does come close to the crossmember, but makes it by. It should look something like this;

Now you need to make a bracket for the top. On top of the new radiator there is one “locating” pin. I used a piece of “hurricane” strapping that is used on house joists. I cut and bent and drilled the piece to fit (you can use all kinds of different material for the top bracket. I used the strapping because it’s what I had on hand). Again I used the 3/8 self tapping screw to attach it. It’ll look something like this;

It blends in pretty good. It is located in the middle of the radiator.

Now you need to deal with the hoses. If you look at the inlet and outlet on the Honda radiator you will see that they are smaller opening than our 1 ¼’ ID hoses (though there are companies out there that will sell you these radiators with various sized outlets and inlets. Or you can certainly weld on new ones yourself – if you’re so inclined). What I did was use a hose for a “diameter shim”. I found a hose size that fit snuggly over the opening (Yes, I pulled this from my extra stock also. It has a 15/16” inner diameter. I believe it was a heater hose). I could then slip the actual upper and lower radiator hose over the top off the “shim” hose. This picture gives you an idea. You can see the upper radiator hose already on, over the shim. And next to it is a piece of the hose that I used for the shim;

As for the upper radiator hose itself; because we moved the radiator over to the other side I needed to extend the hose across. I fortunately found just the right hose at Advance auto. I don’t know the original application, but the Advance auto part number is E71981 CS. They claimed that you could cross reference that number (on the internet) to the application. As you can see in this pic, it worked out perfectly;

It was a little tight to slip on, but not so tight that it would cause problems.

The lower radiator hose, was not quite so easy. It ends up being a hard “S’ shape but with different outlets (a little hard to explain). Here is a pic of the area;

I ended up putting a couple of bends together and connecting them with a piece of 420a water pipe. It’s a little awkward but it works. For what it’s worth, I used the old stock lower hose and Advance Auto hose number C71313 CS. I kind cut it up to work. Here’s the pic;

Now for the last item, the fan. I used a 12” slimfan. With the style of fan that I have, you could actually use a 14” slimfan. I don’t think that the slimfan is absolutely necessary. It does look like you could use the stock fan if you wanted to adapt it.

You need to connect up the wires on it. Here is a pic of the connector and the wires with the fan on (please disregard the tie straps. They didn’t send an attachment kit with the fan, so I just made do until I get a kit);

I just cut off the connector and then there were three wires (two black and one white/black stripe). Now this is a 96 RS so I can’t say for sure that all the wiring is exactly the same from year to year, but this is the wiring I had to deal with;

The white/black stripe wire is the power wire and either of the black wires is the ground. The remaining black wire I just capped off. Now for this fan, I hooked up the power wire to the red wire of the fan (and then the black to the black) this allowed me to have a puller fan. If I wanted a pusher fan, I would just reverse the wires. Here are the wires connected. I used connectors instead of soldering because I knew that I would possibly be moving the fan in and out to allow for the turbo mock up.

Now simply tape up or seal up the wires as you want and you are ready for fluid refill.

written by bullettdsm

bpu

Document statistics: Last modified on 2008-02-20 12:23:59 by bullettdsm