coolant plumbing
Turbo Mini Forums

At the moment i'm not running a heater so i have got the cylinder head outlet going into the inlet manifold then into the bottom hose. l've just read on the minispares website however that this is wrong and that it should be plumbed into the top hose. lt says this should be done because the hot outlet from the cylinder head is pumped straight back into the engine without going through the radiator which is bad obviously, so my question is how can i connect the hose from the cylinder head outlet to the top hose?

I run mine into the bottom hose :S

most do I think!

alex

AlexF

I used to do this, but this years engine ran hot, so changed it...
basically connect heater tap take-off to top hose.
Worked for me!!!

maybe l'm being a bit thick but how do you connect the heater tap take off to the top hose?

metro thermostat housing...


alex

AlexF

cheers, off to the breakers again then!!

Not the way i did it...

I don't like the metro 'stack' housings, and doesn't allow the conventional ult head steadies...
I made a new top hose, or rather a steel tube with a 1/2" pipe welded into it, and used a few odd pieces of 1" hose to join everything together...

Not sure if everyone would go for this, but i drilled a hole straight into the rad and used some JB Autoweld to fix a 1/2" pipe fitting. I then plumbed straight into rad.

I thought it would be handy having an extra inlet on the rad, especially for when the turbo conversion is all done. I think fiesta turbo's have an extra inlet into the rad which is from the turbo.

I'd been having a good chat with Mike Barrett (MBE) about cooling mods and he said the cylinder head outlet into top hose is a good bet and he has seen it proven on the rollers.

When I was at his place a couple of weeks ago Keith Calver was there and he was showing me his setup on his race car, its similar but with a front mounted rad.

I've been having trouble with cooling (or so i thought) but it looks like it might just be the gauge!!

To be honest i just use a heater matrix then stick that into the bottom hose. However there is quite a bit of extra pipeing involved which of course leave less room for other things

If you are running a metro rad or using a rad with the same diameter pipes as the metro, use the old water oil cooler rad pipe, this is a rubber t-piece with two rad size connections and one heater size hose!