Back to the Bus: Rad Swap (Part 2)

Continuing from an earlier posting, today I'll cover the assembly and install of a new Mishimoto all-aluminium radiator into the TDI-powered microbus.

Where Were We?

Old rad, for perspective

In the last post in this series, I removed the old radiator from the bus, destroying the wiring along the way. I removed the framing / bracketing that supported the radiator from the old one and cut off the fans. Now stripped bare, we can compare the new and old radiator. The outlets are the same distance apart. The holes that I used to hold the frame on were in the same spots... but... all the other bits for holding the radiator into a Jetta were flipped over. So, the original fan housing (and air conditioning condenser) would line-up, but it looks like the inlet and outlet are on the wrong side (driver-side versus passenger side). And, the temperature sensor that triggers the fans is now on the same side as the inlet/outlets. So, in a Jetta, this could be solved with different hoses. In the bus, this gets interesting.

Bracketing
Because of the reversal of the inlet/outlet, I realized that the front bar where I had 2 radiator mounts attached needed to get flipped over. I cut off the pop-rivets holding on the mounts, and re-set their location the same way I did it the first time: threading the mounts to the radiator... but wait a minute. The new radiator doesn't use screws. It is threaded for bolts. Neat. I found one bolt in my fastener bins that fit, took it to ACE and got 8 stainless steel hex-bolts that fit: M6 1.0 pitch.

installing fans

Once back from ACE, I threaded on the front mounts, lined up where they should connect to the bar and marked the spots. A quick-run with a 1/8" drill bit and the pop-riveter and the front bar was ready again. I then turned my attention to the fans

Fans
I looked at the pile of plastic and foam bits. I thought I could drill a hole through the original bottom-bit and thread a zip-tie through. Instead, I found fender washers that had a small enough hole to allow the zip-tie, but not large enough for the end to slide through. This would work! So, from the bottom, the zip-tie passed through a washer, a foam bit, the fan housing, the radiator, another foam bit and last a plastic zip-tie anchor. To be extra sure, it would all hold, I ran the zip-tie back through the fins and then through the zip-tie head on the bottom.

Cowling

adding cowling

With fans in place, I attached the mounts. The radiator was starting to get a little heavy. We're feeling almost done, until the flip-over design of the mounting points would stymie the work again. The cowling wasn't fitting anymore. The left and right (driver-side / passenger-side) needed to be reversed because of the angles (front pitched downward to catch some slipstream), but it wasn't quite that simple. After some head-scratching, this ended up being as easy as folding the cowling the opposite direction from what it had been. Then, it bolted right on. I concluded the prep by zip-tying the fan electrical leads to the cowling so they wouldn't be buffeted by the passing winds any longer.

Install
One it was in one piece, I took it back over to the bus and slid it under from the driver side. I hung the threaded carabiners onto the eye-hooks on the frame. Then, I put the front bar on the jack and lifted it into place. Once I was able to get the threaded carabiners onto their respective lengths of chain, I removed the jack and repeated the effort with the rear mounts, again doing the driver side first. I checked the movement, verifying that the radiator unit would swing back and forth, front to back and had some headroom to bounce up.

Wiring Re-wiring

install-ready. topside

Now that the new rad is physically mounted, I switched my focus to the electrical. The new radiator did not deliver with a fan switch, but it did have a threaded hole for one. I had ordered one years ago when I wanted to have the fans come on automatically. I just never got to it. So, I ran the threads on the switch with plumbers tape and threaded it into the hole (with the rubber gasket in place, of course). I still don't have the trust that the temperature-sensitive fan switch will work, so rather than wire that in, I stripped out all of the extraneous wiring and set up the switch on the dash to fire both radiator fans and the little motorcycle fan on the intercooler.

For my sake, I'm posting the circuit numbers from the relay:
30: 12V+ this is fused, but unswitched power so the fans can run with the key off
85: grounded
86: to the fans
87: trigger switch. One day the thermo fan switch will wire in here. For now, it's the dash switch

I cleaned up the wiring so it's nice and tidy with the relay zip-tied to the underside of the bus and out of sight. I may wire the fan switch into relay pin 87 just to see if it works. It might be interesting to wire those pins to a light on the dash so I can see what temperature they fire at... for a first step. If nothing else, I could use that as a temperature warning light.

Plumb and Fill

install-ready. underside

With the electrical solved, and the rain well settled in, I didn't want to give up. I was mostly under the bus anyway, and the bus cover provided additional rain-cover so I wasn't really getting too wet. Fortunately, water hadn't started running under me in growing puddles yet. So, with that motivation, I wriggled the longer hoses onto the 90* bends off the radiator and hose-clamped them really tight. It surprisingly took me no longer to do than it took to type. I went around to the back of the bus, pulled the cover up, opened the tail gate and filled the overflow bottle with G-40. This is a process, requiring filling up to the full line and then venting the air out of the lines with the little spigot I installed just below the thermostat. I continue this process until coolant/water mixture comes out the spigot. It took the gallon of G-40 and wanted more. So, I topped off with distilled water (about 1/2 a gallon).

I dodged to the front of the bus, confirmed the fans ran and then disconnected the battery, closed everything up and dashed inside. One day, I'll have a huge garage. Until then, I work in the rain.

I took Hapy out for a test drive, and I believe the swap is complete. I suspect one or more of the hose clamps will need tightening, but otherwise, I think it's ready. If this fancy super-radiator doesn't do the trick for keeping the temps down, I may need to route more air through it. That would mean either lowering it, routing some ducting from the front or both. Here's hoping the super-rad does the job.

Grilled

I made one last change to the set up after the test drive. I had a section of security fence lying around, so I cut a section, spray-painted with a couple of coats of semi-gloss black and slapped it on the front. This will prevent plastic bags and other garbage (that seems to be appearing on the roads in greater frequency) from getting sucked into the radiator, fouling it's ability to cool the engine. I had meant to do this with the original radiator install. Once I did it, I was surprised at how quickly it went from the cardboard package through the tin-snips and paint to install. In terms of actual effort, it was less than 30 minutes. I really should have done this earlier. The picture to the right shows it mid-install. The nut with washer on each lower corner have since been tightened down and there are zip-ties across the bottom as well as on the top corners holding it in place.

That's it for today. I would like to do something with Hapy's brakes before a real trip. I have rear wheel cylinders and I'd like to replace the lines between the master cylinder and the fill reservoir as well as all brake fluid. Maybe I'll get that done before 4Peaks. I hope so. Anyway, thanks, as always, for following along-

Back to the Bus: Rad Swap (Part 1)

It's been a long time coming, but today, I cover the removal of the under-belly mounted radiator in the TDI-powered bay-window bus. In a subsequent post, I'll cover the bracketing retrofit and install fun. First, some background.

Background

disconnected front chains

Last Summer Boo and I had three incidents with the bus getting too hot. We couldn't keep up with GratefulEd on the way home from 4Peaks (See 4Peaks 2017 Road Report). Then, we were stranded on the side of the road climbing the foothills on our way to Frog Lake (see Almost Frog Lake). Last, we barely scratched out a round trip into central Washington for Chinook Fest (See Chinook Fest 2017 Road Report). First, I thought it was because I let the coolant level get too low. Topping up with water didn't help. Then, I thought I had caused irreparable damage from using the wrong coolant, and did a complete flush and fill. It didn't fix the issue. On the drive home from Chinook Fest, I promised Hapy that I would replace his radiator before we took another drive. After emptying the bus of camping gear, I parked him and winterized him. He has sat with a Bus Depot bus-cover ever since.

Radiator - (almost) 9 Years Later

draining the coolant

I had to reach pretty far back into this blog to figure out when I originally installed the radiator. My earliest references to it date back to November of 2009, and I already had it in hand. If I remember correctly, I bought it used off of CL that summer for $40. It could have been the summer of 2008 or even that spring, I suppose. I just know that it was a nice warm dry day, and that definitely doesn't happen in November. Regardless, this used radiator from an early 90's Jetta gave us 6 years of service, but I believe it has served it's last trip. Looking back through the posts, I detailed location thoughts (here), how I constructed the frame/bracket (here and here), the cowling, test fitting and final fitting, the routing of the coolant lines, etc. I did not change the design with the new radiator, in fact, I reused everything except a few fasteners and zip-ties.

photo nabbed from JEGS,
where I bought mine

Meet the New Rad
I figured that if I was going to buy a replacement radiator, I had 2 options: direct exact replacement (aluminium single-pass core with plastic sides) or an upgraded (multi-pass) all-aluminium one. I considered that I can't say for sure that the original radiator was powerful enough to cool the TDI pushing the bread-loaf down an interstate. When I first did the swap, I babied the bus and I still had my eyes on the temperature gauge. I would really like to stop doing that, so I looked a little deeper into the all-aluminium ones which are supposed to have considerably better cooling capability.

The interweb can't decide if the all-aluminium models are any good. In the mixed reviews, most of the issues appear to be with drop-in fitment, not with performance once installed. Since my fittings are completely custom anyway, I was not deterred. The performance ratings are across-the-board positive, with some actual numbers demonstrating the quality. Of course, not all manufacturers are equal, so I looked to what online vendors sold. There are many radiators which appear to be only sold on eBarf by drop-shipping companies direct from China. That is, except for Mishimoto. The Mishimoto radiators are sold through Summit Racing, ECSTuning, JEGS and a few others. That was enough for me, and I ordered one that was supposed to "fit my vehicle" when I said it was a Jetta3.

It arrived in a very well packed box, designed for shipping and typical shipper mishandling. The extra thick cardboard protected it very well, and it looked so nice and shiny. It looks pretty much like the picture, actually, though instead of "MISHIMOTO" emblazoned across it, there's a big "M". Before I could get too excited, though, I needed to see how the mounts compared to the one I was removing... which meant I had to remove the old one first.

Removal

removing the cowling
and frame mounts

Like so many things, removing is so much easier than installing. I know some folks feel the opposite, but just about every project on this bus starts with an hour of removal followed by a couple of days of trying to get the "exact replacement" installed. This project was no different. Like any radiator removal, we start with draining the coolant. I have a large black catch-pan used just for this purpose, so I slid it under the bus, got myself under there with a slotted screwdriver and had the hoses off and draining within 5 minutes of walking out to the bus. Next, I unplugged the fans. This, unfortunately, was not completely clean. Some of the wires separated from their plug-ends, and the extra wiring for the fan switch complicated things. Last, I had not done a very clean job with the dash fan switch wire when I installed it, looping it around the radiator framing. I had to cut that wire. Grr.. present "me" is not thrilled with past "me". With the wiring in a heap, I kept moving.


The radiator is suspended from the underside of the bus with chains: one on each corner. The top of the chain is attached to an eye-hook that is mounted to the frame just under the floor. The chain and eye hook are connected with a thread-closed carabiner. The same combination is at the bottom of the chain, with an eye hook at each corner and a threaded carabiner attached to it. In between is a short stretch (3 or 4 links) of high-test chain. To remove the radiator from the bus, I slid my orange floor jack under the front rail of the radiator frame and lifted the unit until there was sufficient slack in the chain for the bottom link to slide out from the threaded carabiner. Once free, I lowered the front down, and shifted to the driver-side rear corner and then last the passenger side (I was lying on the passenger side so this order kept things within my sight and reach). Once the radiator and frame were on the ground, I slid them to the driver side so I could pull it out, and took the whole operation into the garage.... just as the rain started.

Radiator Off-Frame

about to remove the fans

Once in the garage, I needed to get all the frame bits and the fans taken off the old radiator. The frame was held on with 10mm screws, 4 on each end  (2 top, 2 bottom). Once removed, the frame and cowling fell away.

Each fan was held on with 4 one-use-only custom zip-ties. On the bottom end was a plastic square that crudely fit into a spot on the bottom of the fan. Connected to that is a zip-tie-like plastic stick that fits through a foam bit, the radiator fins, another foam bit and then another plastic square that clicks along the zip-tie. This last bit is what holds the zip-tie tight. To remove, I cut the custom zip-tie off with wire-cutters, retaining all of the pieces. I had thought that I could drill a hole through the bottom plastic square, and re-use all the rest (except the zip-tie stick part) by using a basic zip-tie. I didn't drill or reuse that bottom plastic bit, but I'll get into that during the re-assembly.

Like so many of my topics, this is too big to fit into one post, so I'll continue this later on. At this point, the old radiator is completely removed and stripped bare. Thanks, as always, for following along,