Radiator for NB SE, looking at CSF and Koyo

[Luke]

Well in the end I did order a radiator from eBay in the USA.
Ended up going with a CSF as I just could not resist the price.
I had a eBay birthday voucher(I think it was 10% off any item) to use so all up it only cost me $340 AUD shipped to my door. Makes you wonder how many the official Aussie seller in QLD actually sells when he wants $630 AUD shipped to your door for the same radiator.

I ordered it on the 21st of January and received it today, 2nd of February.
The box is a bit dirty, but the packaging inside is nice. So even the packaging is well designed by CSF which their website does advertise.
The radiator looks ok from what I can see. The welds are not super pretty like you would see from a robot but they are good.
It is very light, total package weight including the box is only 7.2kg.

The only thing I am a little disappointed in is the country of manufacture. Indonesia.
Then again the Koyo race radiators are also made in Indonesia. I guess that's how you make them cheap.

Eventually it will go into the car as well as a Whiteline swaybar at the same time.
17th/18th Feb would have been a good weekend to do it, but my helper(who will do more work than me ) will be working that weekend.
I don't think I will risk doing it the weekend after as the 1st supersprint is only a week after that.
So maybe early March to April it will happen before the 2nd supersprint round in May.

[Roadrunner]

Hey Luke do ou have a real water temp gauge or just the factory water gauge?

[Luke]

Only factory gauge. Never seen the thing move off the centre even when OB2 has shown 115C, damn hot Marulan. May as well stick a picture of it on the dash.
I gather OBD2 temp is somewhat accurate as that is what I would assume the ECU would use as well to start changing fuel and timing settings when the car his hot.

[SKYHI]

Anyone tried one of these Mishimoto ones?

https://www.mishimoto.com.au/mishimoto- ... iator.html

[Roadrunner]

I imagine that is very similar to the Koyo. I swallowed the very large pill and went a FM cross flow rad. Expensive with shipping & duties etc but it's keeping my worked SE cool far better than the Koyo did, so it was worth the price for piece of mind for me.

[SKYHI]

Yeah that FM cross flow is exxy I've considered the Supermiata cross flow as well, but also need to decide on a coolant reroute at the same time .

[ManiacLachy]

No need to do a coolant re-route on an SE, or even NB8Bs. Our better head gasket does the job of evening out the cooling across the engine.

If/when you build the motor, it's worth getting the old style NB8A head gasket and adding a re-route for that last little bit. You could do it on your stock unopened motor, but it's not necessary and won't change much of anything.

[SKYHI]

Just another one of those things that you can't really get a definitive answer on I've read the numerous threads on MT.net about the reroutes, and the general consensus seems to be in line with what you're saying. I guess I'll leave it on my list of things to do, but maybe move it a long way down the priority list.

Maybe I'll just buy a radiator to suit the standard hose layout for now, and then "upgrade" again if need be to suit the reroute if I ever do it.