Cooling fan

[MX-5 Lazza]

I think we've already been around the houses on that one mate. All he needs is airflow through the engine bay as the turbo is close to the glass fibre bonnet so the hope is that the airflow will stop the bonnet melting/paint burning before the turbo has had a chance to cool down.

[trackerjack]

VladD said:

Great car collection Jon. Thanks for the pictures.

The wifes MX is a peach and lives in the garage, when I bought it for her it was owned by a guy in Portsmouth who lived close to the footy ground and we surmised with red car and a number plate with LFC (Liverpool FC) it would be vandalised sooner rather than later hence up for sale. I have done the usual springs replace(they break on their own in cold weather).
The one car not shown is the wifes office as she is a fully qualified driving instructor for AA. (she has given up on me)

Cooling the turbo ect is not a concern as I live and work in residential areas so slow before stopping.

[VladD]

trackerjack said:

VladD said:

Great car collection Jon. Thanks for the pictures.

The wifes MX is a peach and lives in the garage, when I bought it for her it was owned by a guy in Portsmouth who lived close to the footy ground and we surmised with red car and a number plate with LFC (Liverpool FC) it would be vandalised sooner rather than later hence up for sale. I have done the usual springs replace(they break on their own in cold weather).
The one car not shown is the wifes office as she is a fully qualified driving instructor for AA. (she has given up on me)

Cooling the turbo ect is not a concern as I live and work in residential areas so slow before stopping.

My MX has the same rear wing as that. Never sure whether I should take it off or not.

[trackerjack]

Matter of personal choice.
I like it and think it matches the car.
I am biased of course but I love the Mk1 shape.

[MX-5 Lazza]

That rear wing looks like a genuine Mazda accessory. I'd keep it.

[trackerjack]

She will keep her car exactly as it is as she loves it and will never sell it for personal reasons (not just because its the only thing I have bought her!)

Back to the special now, I would pick your brains as I will not track the car until I have installed a 13 row oil cooler and fitted an accurate temp gauge as opposed to standard.

The heater is not connected but that could also run through a small rad to aid cooling (I always have the heater on full when tracking).

Any other suggestions please?

[VladD]

Could you put a NACA duct in the nose to get air in and then a couple of inverted ones in the bonnet near the windscreen to get the hot air out?

[MX-5 Lazza]

Looking at your engine pictures, I'm surprised you are still running with an AFM. With the turbo I assume you aren't running the stock ecu.

[skinny]

i've often thought about installing a mini radiator in the water line from the turbo, you don't tend to see it done but i'm not sure why that is.

[cwinterb]

Oil temp was the issue for me in my standard UK 1.8 mk1 when I took it on track for the first time. I'd been advised to keep an eye on it so had fitted a Stack oil temp gauge with the sender in a sandwich plate under the filter and was seeing 135C+, which is too hot IMO, on a cool day in April at Oulton Park. Since then I have fitted an oil cooler with a 92C thermostatic take off (from Thinkauto, speak to Matt) and never seen the oil temp go much above 110C. I had the cooler itself custom fabricated which was unnecessarily expensive especially as I ended up re-doing the mounting as I wasn't happy with where the bloke put it (bolted to the engine undertray :-o). If I was doing it again I'd fit one of the integrated fan shroud/oil cooler thingies that MX5 Parts now sell, or mount a 13 row cooler on the back of the rad. My oil cooler is actually in front of the radiator, which means in winter I have to cover half the grille with gaffer tape or it runs too cool, even with the oil stat. I may move it again, which will also have the benefit of vastly reducing the length of pipe running to it.

I also fitted an alloy rad, silicone hoses and an accurate water temp gauge with the sender in the top hose. Never had an issue with water temp but having an accurate gauge is interesting as it does move, unlike the heavily damped standard gauge which goes to "normal" and stays there. Now I know what the temp is at a cruise, and when sitting in traffic and when the fan kicks in I'm confident I'd spot it overheating before the standard temp gauge even budged.

[skinny]

depending on your car, you can just do a mod with resistors and stuff to the stock coolant gauge to take away the massive dead spot in the middle.

i too have a thermostatic takeoff for my oil cooler, which is behind the rad. don't have a gauge on there tho, have you used a sandwhich plate in addition to the cooler take-off plate?

[MX-5 Lazza]

Mine has an alloy rad with an oil cooler built in to one end. My oil cooler also runs through a stat but I've never had any problems with it running too cool in winter. Are you sure your stat is working correctly?

[cwinterb]

skinny said:

i too have a thermostatic takeoff for my oil cooler, which is behind the rad. don't have a gauge on there tho, have you used a sandwhich plate in addition to the cooler take-off plate?

I relocated the oil filter as well, so I have a takeoff plate where the oil filter would normally be and two short hoses running to a remote filter head mounted in the inner wing (sort of, on some existing holes). The thermo take off is on top of the remote filter head and the filter on top of that.

For ease of plumbing the remote filter head has inlet/outlet ports on both sides, you just blank off the ones you don't use. The temp sensor is in one of these unused ports.

You can use a sandwich plate as well as the thermo take off plate under the oil filter, but you may have to move the inlet manifold support bracket to get enough clearance.

If that makes no sense I'll try and take a photo over the weekend.

[MX-5 Lazza]

cwinterb said:

I relocated the oil filter as well, so I have a takeoff plate where the oil filter would normally be and two short hoses running to a remote filter head mounted in the inner wing (sort of, on some existing holes). The thermo take off is on top of the remote filter head and the filter on top of that.

That's exactly how mine is set up.

[cwinterb]

MX-5 Lazza said:

Mine has an alloy rad with an oil cooler built in to one end. My oil cooler also runs through a stat but I've never had any problems with it running too cool in winter. Are you sure your stat is working correctly?

I looked at one of those rads from PWR (who supplied the original Flyin Miata ones). However, they wanted somewhere close to a grand to knock one up. I've got the PDF they sent me with the dimensions on it somewhere, if anyone wants it.

I have wondered about the stat on mine, maybe next time I change the oil I will pull it all apart and try and test it. However, my custom oil cooler is also fairly large, unnecessarily so I think.

[trackerjack]

Thanks for the advice all and though the bonnet is not on show in my picture I have an air inlet just in front of the turbo and an alloy grille above it so plenty of air cooling when moving.

The HSK turbo instalation has a piggy back ECU that plugs in to control the fuel etc and using the MOT emissions meter you can actually see the effect unplugging it has!

A lot of people do not know how important oil is in the cooling of an engine which is why I wont track it till its fully sorted.

Daughter has a BMW that does 0-60 in 5 sec at the moment and my little special is faster to at least 100 in my opinion so about 4 or so sec would be about right.
Boy its fun I cannot wait to see how it fares against the bike engine cars!

[trackerjack]

Right back to the threadline, I took the cooling fan relay out and wired it seperately as standard apart from the small connecter nearest the wing which is the ign power in and wired this to a permanent live because the thermo switch works by earthing the relay and energising the fan so it now works until the top of the engine is below thermo switch operating temp.
This makes me happy to leave the car after stopping it and dont worry about the bonnet and car going up in smoke!

Next to fit is a 13 row oil cooler and then track bound!

Thanks again lads and I look forward to seeing some of you at a track sometime.