I can think of a few reason why a rear radiator set up for a conversion would be a bad idea, but has anyone seen or heard of them being done successfully, maybe with ducting running out to vents infront of rear fenders and a custom shroud? Just curious.



peace,
Chuck

I'm building one soon. If you don't find one by then you can look at mine

Cons versus putting in front trunk:
-Weight balance could be worse depending on what you want to do.
-Poor shrouding or sucking hot air off the motor could lead to inadequate cooling.

Pros
-No water lines running to front.
-Less overall water line length and therefore weight.
-Better aerodynamics in the front end.

There is a thread on this site with a rear radiator for a subie. The owner finally went to a front set up. There just isn't enough air flow in the back. I would like to see some Boxster scoops and dual rad setup. For mine, I'm staying with my front setup. It works!

Air across the back is pretty dead and creating aerodynamics to produce good airflow could be tough. Coolant flow would be better, but the weight forward is better...... Dune buggies put it in the rear all the time but they don't care about CG.
B

my first 914 I was running a mid radiator setup. The battery and turbo for the inline four were on the passenger side, and the radiator was on the driver side. With the rain tray pulled, and a fan pulling air through the radiator, it worked fine for me.

WCC 2005 Scott drove his Suby conversion from MD to CA. his rad was in front of teh eng in teh eng comp

i guess it just depends on how much you want to cool....

Suby conversion before Renegade came out with theirs.

Absolutely unrefined in every sense of the word but it made it all the way from MD to CA and back. We traveled through the desert together and got stuck in construction traffic. The car cooled well enough it didn't over heat.

Looked like hell but apparently worked pretty well ...

I know is not a 914 but my vw ghia with rear radiator work fine is a street legal car + I do D E and temp is not a problem Click to view attachment

Checking in to see if anyone has made this work

For a stock setup I put one in the back by the rear axle. It just didn't seem to work very well. There's just to much radiant heat from the exhaust pipes and the engine fan blowing air through the cooling system.

The best place is in the front trunk area. But for a conversion it might work.

I think it comes down to horsepower. You might be able to get away with it if you run tame HP figures (say in the 150-180 range), but start running into trouble as you add things like turbochargers and 6-cyl engines. I'm also assuming that the motivation for running a rear (or mid) mounted radiator is to prevent cutting into the body. If one is willing to make the cuts, I'm not sure that I could come up a reason for not just pumping the water to the front? It's not like you're going to be saving much in the way of fab work or time. The additional head on the pump doesn't impact it's ability to cool the motor provided one puts some forethought into the piping arrangement. Also, mounting it up front allows you to keep the radiator (and pluming) as low as possible. Any trunk or engine bay mounted set-up would likely be much higher. The front will give you the best airflow, yada, yada, yada.

That said...It would be really fun to see some designs. Just because it's not logical doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. I mean, look at how Porsche have continued to develop that rear engine drive train...

I think if you had a subaru trani setup and moved the setup rearward more You could have more room for a radiator setup in front of the engine. If you had some direct air into the radiator from the side of the car and a nice scoop setup under the car you could probably get it cooled nicely. But I agree this would be limited to a N/A setup and probably only fit with a subaru 4 cylinder.

Hit up Robert about coolant tempts on his rotary.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...=150040&hl=

Thank you for this link, don't know how I missed it! Love the idea, wonder if this setup would support a LS engine?

Short answer, no.

His rotary fits exceptionally short in the engine bay. I doubt you could clear the intake manifold.

While the engine lid radiator sounds like a good idea, it makes it hard to make any repairs until the system cools down and the air flow is very turbulent in this location.

Just received a confirmation that the rain tray slightly bumps the LS intake when closing the engine lid. So this could be problematic. One solution, perhaps have 2 radiators in parallel on either side of the GT engine lid. This would leave some room in the middle to clear the intake.

Just thinking out loud

FWIW, I wanted to take this opportunity to dispel the idea that the longs become heat soaked if you run thru the longs with your hose. I haven't noticed any temp increase in the cabin.