Can't take the heat? burst a pipe...

After I finished replacing the power steering lines, I took the car out for a test run and when I got back I was looking over a few things when I saw steam coming out from the back of the bonnet.

So I quickly turned the engine off and tried investigating the cause, this was made extra difficult by the amount of coolant steam that was still coming out even with the engine off, but it did eventually help pin point where the problem was... the heater hoses under the intake manifold had rotted out!

 

First I tried looking for a set of replacement stock rubber hoses, but that was like harvesting rocking horse turds. Next I thought I'd look for a set of silicone hoses, that was still a difficult task there are tonnes of kits for RB25 and 26, but not so much for RB20.

However, I eventually found a kit that would work, so once they turned up I got to work replacing every crusty rubber heater hose with supple new silicone hoses.

All was going well, I started with the  hoses under the intake and worked my way around the back of the block. Then, as I started to replace the hoses to the radiator I looked at the inlet on the top of the radiator and noticed there was a piece missing, it was in the hose...

... Guess that means I'm replacing the radiator too!

I did look at replacing with a stock replacement, but after realising that it wasn't much more to get an all aluminium replacement from Mishimoto, I decided that was the way to go! 

The new radiator turned up a couple of days later and I got to work on replacing the old with the new, it was a relatively straight forward job, there was no coolant to drain as that had already been done prior to starting the pipe replacement.

The radiator fit directly into the same location as the stock one, and the pipes both connected perfectly fine. I wanted to re-use the stock fan shroud as I know the temps in this engine bay can get pretty hot, but sadly the shroud had other ideas.

I started off mocking it up outside of the engine bay to check that everything lined up and it seemed to, however when I came to fitting it in the car the fan was coming into contact with the shroud, and then while I was trying to figure out why this was happening the shroud decided it didn't want to be used anymore and a chunk came away from the top.

I decided to leave this as a job for "Ron", as I do really want to have a shroud in place its just whether I fabricate one or find a stock one that works with the rad/fan.

once all pipes clamps had been checked and double checked it was time to start filling with coolant and bleeding, a process I'm all too familiar with these days! 

Thankfully my new friend Bill Fucket was on hand to make the job even easier!