Watercooling hoses through longs?, I need feedback from those who've done it. Options

[pktzygt]

I'm finalizing my Suby conversion and I can seem to make myself put the cooling lines under the car.

I can think of one person (Britain) who has put the cooling hoses in the longs, but I was hoping to get some feedback on the difficulty of installation and how well it works form some suby or V8 guys. Part of the problem is that I haven't ever cut into the longs myself.

One one hand I don't want to put extra heat in the cabin or lose foot space but on the other, I hate the shortcut look of the under car routing.

Do the bends in the hose cause cooling issues?

Can the hoses go into the longs without taking foot space?

Should I put them under the car and re-route them as a future winter project?

Thanks!

[pktzygt]

Yeah, Skeates. I'm not too worried about the cooling capacity with the subaru motor and the renegade cooling. I've never heard any issues with this setup unless someone screwed something up like swapping the inlet and outlet hoses.

I'm not going to cut open my longs for much more than getting the hose in the front of the long. Have you seen the threads where the door gaps get messed up. I'm not opening that can of worms. I'm hesitant to even put an engman kit on it.....yet.....

[Cracker]

Yeah, Skeates. I'm not too worried about the cooling capacity with the subaru motor and the renegade cooling. I've never heard any issues with this setup unless someone screwed something up like swapping the inlet and outlet hoses.

I'm not going to cut open my longs for much more than getting the hose in the front of the long. Have you seen the threads where the door gaps get messed up. I'm not opening that can of worms. I'm hesitant to even put an engman kit on it.....yet.....

Sean,

You bring up two interesting points. First, you will have no problem with cooling if the renegade cooling kit is the same for both the LS/Subie options. I actually run to cool - their system is extremely efficient.

DOOR GAPS
The rockers and longs are thin and it doesn't take much at all to start screwing up gaps. Been there done that when welding in a cage and the plates were attached to the inside rockers (without sufficiently "hanging" the body). It all was corrected perfectly but I AM STILL AMAZED AT HOW FLIMSY THE 914 CHASSIS IS - my car is a relatively rust free example too!!! Be careful with the longs/rockers!

The other thing that makes things tight up front for cooling hoses is the gas tank, steering rack, MC location and having in/out on same side of rad. I ran my hoses neatly down the two belly pan reliefs (front-to-rear), then over the rack, through the shock tower divider side by side.

Since this is a long post...I might as well continue at this point. What I plan to do and might be of help to someone in the future is: 1) Build 6 gussests that will compress the hoses slightly vertically (egg) and taper out on either side. Think of these as skid plate protectors for the cooling lines under the car. I'm leaving the sides open for cooling and lining the bottom of these gussets with aluminun sheet (1/8") to keep the majority of debris/crap out and protect from loose road junk damaging them. I'm done now - sorry.