LocostUSA.com

Building dedicated modified autocrosser using a book chassis, standard nosecone size (maybe a TTL from Kinetic) with a 12A rotary engine.

Anyone have leads on what size radiator will fit the nose cone AND keep me cool from grid to course and back?

I have a high flow oil cooler from a V8 stock car, this should be overkill on the oil cooling.

Thanks

Put a large radiator in back with an electric water pump and a high CFM fan. Put the oil cooler front and center in the grill. Run some aluminum or copper piping to and from the front of the car.

An early 90's Honda Civic radiator seems to be a favorite. Not sure if it's got enough juice to keep a rotary cool.

there are some higher-performance versions of the Civic radiator that ought to do the job. If you want to get fancy:

http://www.absoluteradiator.com/Product ... ?idProd=10

Just found this on eBay, 0.5" thicker than normal, 3 cores:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/93-97-Ho ... enameZWDVW

Oops, bad feedback on seller.

Here's some interesting stuff:

http://www.evanscooling.com/main23.htm

What’s wrong with the early Rx7 radiator and the Mazda oil cooler? They are compact and effective.

thomson2008 -
The third gen RX7 also has a couple of turbos.
They kinda heat things up...

Locofinn, I can't see how any car will overheat within 2-3 mins of driving with a normal radiator that fits in the nose.
Oh, and if you're going with a big oil cooler keep an eye on oil pressure.

Moti

I think thomson2008 is a rather clever spambot for the 'budapest property' link in the signature. His/hers/its' other posts seem to be snippets of text with the same keywords as the discussion.

For a 60-second auto-x run?

I don't know about where he's from, but for every 60 second run you spend 20 minutes idling on the grid. Not a good way to cool your car down. I shut mine off and push it around like a skateboard and use a garden sprayer on the rad.

I used to do the same with my miata when I autoxed it, shut it off and push it.
If it's at work temp, there's no point in letting it heat soak.

Moti

Oh lord, now we're letting the spambots steer the direction of our discussions.

there seem to be a few RX7 powered cars under construction. Has anybody here actually got an N/A RX7 powered Locost running for some time on the street or track? If so what did you use for a radiator? The Civic radiator is about 1/2 the size of my stock '91 RX7 radiator. Even with the high performance thicker core Civic radiator, I think it will be too small. On the other hand, can the RX7 need as much cooling as a V6 or even a Chevy small block V8? What are these cars using?

FYI, I have a Champion book chassis and a CMC front nose (at the moment). I want to fit these. Crazy idea: has anybody tried running 2 radiators back to back?

Well there was a link on the front page to a guy in Canada's build that was RX-7 based. (some jerk replaced it with a pic of his own car) It was yellow and the guy's name escapes me at the moment. Anyway, I read his build log on his website (which predates this place) and he mentioned going through at least a couple of engines before finding a way to keep them cool. I'll poke around and see if I can find a link on here.

He went through two engines because of autoxing or track use?
I can see how cooling of a rotary becomes a major issue at the track but how hard can it be to keep a non turbo rotary cool for a minute?

The guys at 7's only (a well known RX7 race shop located at Buttonwillow raceway) run a massive radiator on their GT2 cars and two (!) of the OEM oil coolers connected in series.

Moti

It was a track machine. IIRC he took off the front cycle wings because they were making too much lift at high speeds.