Steguis Motorsports: Mr Sideways x Sakebomb Garage High Performance Radiator

Monday, April 8, 2024

Mr Sideways x Sakebomb Garage High Performance Radiator

I've been meaning to improve the cooling on my car for some time now and picked a Mr Sideways x Sakebomb Garage high performance dual pass radiator with 12 and 10 inch low profile SPAL fans. It's supposed to be a bit more efficient than my Koyo radiator with much quieter fans than my old FAL setup. I also wanted to go back to OEM rubber radiator hoses from the Samco Silicone hoses I had before due to the coolant smell you can sometimes get from coolant that permeates through them.

Mr Sideways x SBG radiator setup

First order of business was to drain the coolant of course, then removing the hoses and old radiator setup from the car.

Radiator drained

Old radiator removed

The fan switch had to get moved over to the new radiator.. For some reason my existing fan switch didn't have an O-ring and I didn't have a new one but thankfully SJF had some O-ring spares that worked. Getting the OEM hoses in was tight but not too terrible but after we put the new radiator in the car we ran into our first big-ish problem. My combo catch can / coolant overflow required us to move the AC line closer to the inside several years ago and this was now exactly where the upper coolant hose needed to route. We had to push the AC line down some more and not route the coolant hose through the bracket that normally supports it but instead just support it with the AN fittings going to the oil catch can.

New radiator in and hoses attached

Upper radiator hose supported by the catch can fittings

SJF uses a vacuum filler to vacuum the entire coolant system so we know the seals are good then about 1.5 Gallons of Honda Type-2 coolant was added.

Coolant getting sucked in by the vacuum

Once we got that filled, the old connectors from the previous radiator were cut and transferred and soldered to the new radiator since I have different radiator connectors from stock. The next problem were the radiator stays. The location of the radiator posts don't line up with the factory location so on the driver side, a 1/4-20 nutsert had to be installed into one of the existing holes and new holes drilled in both my radiator stay and carbon fiber cooling plate. We also had to drill new holes on the passenger side radiator stay so it could be bolted in. Additional carbin fiber had to be cut off to accommodate the new location of the coolant cap. For a radiator that's built for an S2000 you'd think they would have this sorted and not require additional fabrication.