Hayden's 1990 SW20

[Haydz]

It's not this. The engine will work fine and the injectors are the only major thing causing issues that we sorted. It overheated before the injectors where changed.

Just to add on to this - the overheating was an issue long before injectors were changed, over the weekend I imagine the relatively long-haul driving really put more emphasis on the fact that my radiator's almost certainly partially blocked (a new one's on the shopping list!).

As I understand it (from my dummy brain) - it has the whole Gen2 wiring loom and ECU, so the ECU can't really tell anything's much different from normal. This is probably the wrong way to think about it, but it makes sense in my head

[Haydz]

Right, today I made some very good progress!

The biggest is that the car now runs! Turns out there was a mess of cables that had rubbed against the rear axle and was causing it to short-circuit, blowing the EFI fuse in the process. I've isolated all the wires and cable-tied the harness that was hanging up to keep it securely away from all moving parts.

The cables in question - a bit out of focus, sorry!

Phil and I think it's the harness from the O2 Sensor, so I'll need a new one of those to clear the check engine light (was giving me a Code 21). Other than that, the car starts properly, idles nicely, and overall seems to behave itself. Haven't driven it yet as the WOF's out and I won't be getting one until I can get a new O2 sensor and drop the new radiator in.

I've also just pulled the radiator and fans out, the radiator was pretty grotty with a load of rusting on the insides. I'll be ordering a nice new one from Redline Performance, so hopefully that arrives soon! Not 100% sure if I'll need to get new radiator fans/modify my current ones somehow. I also managed to get the radiator's water temp sensor out (which I suspected was buggered, as it would never trigger the radiator fan to turn on).

Not the greatest photo, as you can't see the rusted-out pipes that lead in/out of the radiator...

But hey, PROGRESS!

Huge thanks to Phil (and everyone else) for their knowledge and help!

[ClanFever]

It's very hard to get the radiator fans to operate (lots of coolant and car never heats it up enough etc), it may have been cold where it was sensing due the blockage - good to see the troubleshooting and progress!!

[Haydz]

SHE'S BACK, BABY!

New radiator arrived which was great! Feels super light, and the build quality looks great.

What wasn't so great was the radiator fans not lining up with the mounting points on the radiator... I think Phil mentioned that the automatic/turbo SW20's have bigger radiators (and bigger fans to match, I'd assume). This made things a bit of a headache for me...

I also painted some rust-converter onto the fan shroud (and painted my radiator fans for the hell of it) while Phil and I (mostly Phil but shhhh) thought up a solution.

Phil had some leftover bits of aluminium lying around, so he came by and dropped them off (along with some tools - thank you!) for me to """fabricate""" some custom mounting points for it.

And finally, after quite a few hours of measuring, drilling, hacksawing, (and a lot of colourful 4-letter words) I finally managed to get the two together.

To get it into the car was a whole other ordeal entirely - the hoses between the radiator and the car were too short and not very flexible (I got some nice new hoses) - so I had to cut them down to size. The amount of space in there wasn't a lot, so I had to attach one end of each hose to the radiator itself, then lift the radiator (with hoses attached) up into the car, get the radiator in position, and THEN swear at the car profusely to get the damn things to attach to the metal pipes (on the car).

It took a whole day just to get it all together - I started at about 9 in the morning when Phil dropped off the tools and metal, and got the radiator installed at about 6-7PM.

Worth it though!

Also huge, huge thanks to Phil, you're a hero!

[GDII]

All good Hayden. Just want to help keep MR2s on the road! Good effort creating the brackets based on a very quick sketch I sent you.

And yes, the turbo variant and the NA auto have the exact same radiator part number. About 100mm wider than the NA manual. And the fan shroud will be different hence the need to adapt it somehow. Not sure how others have done it as I've only read about people saying they modded the shrouds. Never any photos or a description on how. That was just how I saw it would work based on how the radiator mounting points and shroud mounting points lined up.

[ClanFever]

I think I have two auto/turbo radiator fans laying around but might need some measurements... might save the next person in this dilemma (might even be me as I'm still on a 28 year old NA radiator...). Looking good Hayden, nice fans! I am a fan