Tools: 10mm socket, drill, dremel, file, wire cutter/stripper, screwdrivers, soldering iron
Materials: Flex-A-Lite 220 Puller dual
fans, Nismo radiator, wire, aftermarket plug and recepticle X2,
zip-ties, solder, electrical tape, wire loom, antifreeze, distilled
water, and Water Wetter..
The FAL fans and Nismo radiator are a popular
upgrade for the turbo SR20s. Having a turbocharger under
the hood can make it pretty hot especially
in stop and go traffic. The NX, being without a grill, suffers
the
most from high underhood temps.
First thing is to drain the coolant and pull
the radiator and fans out. My turbo sits so close I have to leave
the secondary fan attached to the radiator
to get it out.
Here we have a comparision of radiators.
A Sentra SE-R radiator is on the bottom followed by the OEM
NX 2000 radiator, and finally a Nismo radiator.
You can see the core thicknesses here, The SE-R one
is roughly 2/3 of an inch while the NX and
Nismo are 1 inch thick.
So the NX and Nismo radiator look to be the
same exact dimensions. Did I get ripped off? No, you
see the Nismo radiator has 24 fins per inch
versus 18 on the NX, more fins per inch is more surface area
to radiate heat resulting in an 18% improvement
in cooling. Note the SE-R radiator also has 24 fins per
inch but with a core 1/3 smaller it is less
efficient than the NX radiator even. Switching from an SE-R
to a Nismo radiator is a 29% increase
in cooling efficiency! The Nismo radiator isn't some special
piece, it is actually the radiator that was
used for Nissan's factory rally car the Pulsar
GTiR .
The FAL fans are a close size but do need to
be modified to fit. Once you have the radiator out you
can place the new fans over it and see what
needs to be trimmed for it to sit flush. Basically, you need
to trim cutouts where the upper and lower
inlet pipes are. I used a small screwdriver to scribe location
marks then cut out paper half circles to trace
what needed to be cut away. A little bitty drill bit was used
to make a somewhat dotted line in the plastic
which enabled me to break out the pieces into the shape I
wanted, a little dremmeling and filing smoothed
out the edges and made sure it cleared okay.
Once fitted correctly you need to find a way
to fasten the fans to the radiator. For now I will use zip-ties.
You'll need to drill some small pass-thrus
for the zip-ties right where the OEM fan bottom mounting posts are
located and up top where you can thread two
zipties through holes in the radiator support (I used existing holes right
next to each radiator bracket) This a safer way than to use the included
thru-core mounting bolts included
with the fans, I've heard of stories where
the bolts eventually wears holes into the aluminum radiator core :-0
I also lengthened the wires and and
spliced in new plugs to the cars existing wiring harness. Note how
the
fan wires on the left are covered in black
loom, it's little touches like these that give your engine a clean
professional look (No birdnest DET engine
bay here ;-)
Here we have the radiator and new fans in place,
you can see the two zip-ties holding the top of the fans
against the radiator as well as my custom
plugs. I simply wired both fans just like stock so they operate
either when the engine temp gets hot enough
or when the AC is turned on.
So now the fans come on like they should but
flow a whole lot more air, 2500cfm total! Compared to stock
they really suck! ;-) I can actually
feel suction through the AC condenser and they run half as long as the
stock ones once they kick in.
