how does the inside door handle come off ?

There is a little slide pin on the round part of the handle that if you poke it out with a large paperclip then the handle can be pulled straight off

The hardboard and foam covering material that the door vinyl is glued to has a 1.5 hole in back of the handle, this allows for the handle to be pushed in to expose the small pin the passes through the handle and shaft. Best way to get it out is with a thin nail set or a nail and gently tap the end of the pin being careful to watch where it drops. To reinsert use a needle nose pliers to set it into the handle hole while pushing inward on the handle ( you almost need to have three hands) then use the nail set to tap it back in.

Super!!!

you guys are the best

Thank you

And what have you found about any fixing screws around the perimeter of the door skin or the bolster above near the side curtain ?

David, just curious where did you mount the water radiator for use in your speedster.  I think you write you have Subaru engine power ?  Thanks.

 

---George K. ----

Hi George.....glad you're back.

Giday, George...and welcome back too.

 

I have a mid '90's Saab rad mounted up front between the bumper brackets. It's almost horizontal, about 3" up in front. Here's a lousy picture of the area. You can see a two bay scoop mostly. It used to be three bay but it proved to be too much. I'm thinking that I likely could do without it all together but I do travel to the deep South frequently.

 

If you look at this picture closely, you can see the aluminum tubes heading from each side of the rad back to the rear of the car. These were Hang Glider wing spars in their earlier life. There is quite a bit of heat just given off by these tubes and I do think my rad is too large. It measures 19" x 12", single row. I'm convinced something like a tiny Honda Civic rad would do just fine. I have some of that honeycomb rad protection stuff on either side of the scoop. The scoop itself is tilted a bit up to keep road kill / debris from getting in. Inside the scoop are several vanes to deflect incoming air up into the front of the rad rather than letting it all compress to the rear. Again, likely overkill.

Hey George welcome back to the madness..

David, that looks good, the scoops must do a good job at speed do you have any issues at idle if you let it idle for a while?    Ray 

 

P.S. I am going out today as the weather is so nice gotta get some driving maybe Gatineau Park.... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZzEzDkeHzI

Giday, Ray. I'm not even sure it the scoop is necessary. I may remove it next Spring and give it a test.

 

My thermostat opens fully at 170 deg F and the rad fans come on at 180. I have heard them run while in traffic down South or on a very hot day up here.

 

I got my Speedster down to the Market yesterday but had work to do today. A perfect day for the Gatineau Hills for sure.

And you didn't ask, but for what it's worth: yes, a $60 two-row, aftermarket Honda Civic/Del Sol radiator will cool a 2.2 liter N/A Subaru in this kind of application. I don't know if it could be adapted to a Speedster, but it was perfect for my MG TD and, once I got the air out of the system and the head gaskets replaced, it's very steady at 180-195 F on the Smiths dual gauge. Fan lights up at 190 and it does run in heavy traffic, regardless of ambient. Tuesday that happened: took 2:15 to crawl home 18 miles after I-95 N was shut down by an accident.

One way to do it is to source out the size of rad Subie used and calculate the surface area of the rad the type of rad and the type of fan they used.
That would be as good a starting point then you can go from there as a minimum
My 2 shekels

Ray, 

 

As you said, that may be a starting point, but that's all it is.  Square footage of the core is much more important than rad thickness, but the most important qualifier is the amount of available air.  Example: a stock Subi 2.5 rad core (without top/bottom or side caps) may be 380 sq.in., for example, but that size is designed for an unobstructed passage of air in a conventional, upright orientation at the front of the car.  

 

When you move the rad to an alternate location and change the orientation to horizontal, or mostly horizontal, you need to enlarge the core and use ducting to direct the air to the rad, and a shroud to ensure even air flow through the entire core.  Since air will want to bypass or go around the rad, seeking lower pressure, the rad will be more efficient if air is forced through it by partitions/blocking, and puller fans are mounted on the exhaust side of the partition with as little restriction as possible for exhaust air.  What you want is high pressure on the rad inlet side, low pressure on the rad outlet side.  This creates the maximum pressure differential, which is essential to rad efficiency.

 

The Vanagon conversion guys, with remote rad placement, estimate that a rule of thumb for rad capacity is the replacement core for the same Subi engine needs to be 1.5 to 2 times as large as stock.  You can go with a thicker rad, and double or even triple pass cores, but those options create their own problems with back pressure and water flow concerns.

 

The lower the HP, the easier it is to cool an engine.  Big turbo, increased HP = higher waste engine heat, which means bigger cooling problems.  The accepted equation for engine heat: 1/3 goes to making power, 1/3 goes out the exhaust, and 1/3 is used up in the engine cooling system.  Engine heat is the the blessing and the curse.  If you're putting out 160 HP or so, there are lots of small rads that will work.  When you get up to 300 HP, the system needs a robust design with quality parts, so that proper temp can be maintained when doing 80 on a highway or stuck in 95 degree stop-n-go.

On my car I actually calculated the sq inches of the original 2.5L subie rad, and also the CFM of the fan but I do not have an alternate location or mid engine radiator set up. . Jim tell us about your cars rad set up... Ray

Ray,

 

Part of the difficulty we face is that we don't fall into someone else's design parameters.  By that, I mean Porsche engineers have done their magic with the modern 911's and their iterations, using wind tunnels, smoke testing, smart engineering and, of course, smart engineers.

 

Our replicas are the poor step-children of the auto industry.  No one is designing or re-designing our car shapes for water cooling, more HP for air-cooled engines, increased air flow, etc.  The company that built my replica did a poor job of design.  Their entire "ducting" for the engine radiator consisted of a 3" x 5" bent piece of aluminum that had been pop riveted to a cross member in front of the stock Subi rad.  There was no other ducting in front of the rad or shroud on the back end.  Naturally, almost all of the available air under the car went around the rad, so it didn't function well at all.

 

I am now on iteration #3, with the largest Mishimoto rad (17.5" x 27") I could fit in the rear compartment, the compartment where the engine sits in a conventional rear-engine configuration.  Dual-pass aluminum configuration, with a large, rectangular aluminum duct to force air into the horizontal rad, two 12" Spal high output puller fans on the back or top side, and a complete shroud to ensure that all the rad air gets pulled uniformly through the fins.  Next step is to completely enclose the rest of the open space in the compartment with aluminum sheet metal to force all the air through the rad, stopping bypass air, since air will always bypass a rad to go to the lower pressure available around it, if the space is open. 

 

In addition, I have installed two heat exchangers in the front wheel wells, getting air through the horn grills, for my air/water inter-cooler, with a water reservoir and circulation pump, and moved the air con condenser to the left rear wheel well to get more air to it.  I would like to mount an oil cooler also, but I'm running out of real estate.

 

The existing air con creates enough waste heat that I have not been able to run it when it's needed the most--when air temps are mid-80's or above.  It will spike engine coolant temp.  I also have two NACA ducts that I will install in both rear quarter windows with 3" tubing through the engine cover to the engine rad if blocking off the rear engine compartment doesn't bring temps under control.  The only way I've been able to drive the car so far in moderate to high ambient temp is to leave the inside engine lid cracked open, and leave the rear deck lid open about 8", neither of which are permanent cooling solutions, and not much fun to drive, with high cabin heat.  With the deck lid removed, the car runs almost as it should, temp wise, but that's still with the engine lid inside cracked open and no air con. 

 

I have now cut out almost all of the rear deck lid, leaving only a 3" ring around the outside.  Next is to glass in a shoulder with inset, then mount an open grill/screen.  I tried other less drastic measures, such as increasing grill size, opening up the louvers, etc., all of which restricted the exhaust air from the fans too much, and lowered rad efficiency.  BTW, fan CFM is rated at 0 pressure.  When back pressure occurs, all data on electric fans, either push or pull, is obsolete. 

 

I'm really interested in Chris' new build, since his HP and mine will present many of the same problems.  Whether we like it or not, we're the ones who have to figure this stuff out.  I am trying to take a more positive approach to my car problems.  I'm lucky to have good health and a great family, and to have so much going well in my life that a car that needs lots of work is pretty small potatoes.    

 

 

Jim, sometimes a few ideas thrown out might come up with a different result. I ran your issues by an old friend of mine that used to design some aircraft items a long time ago. We spoke a while and a few things came up. Whats the material of the coolant tranfer pipes that run from front to rear made of, for dissipation of heat? Are the pipes side by side causing a heat transfer scenario. He asked if they could be reduced in size and adding a cooling water jacket to them. He mention putting everything back to stock and introducing an independent high speed hood cowl induction system for cooling only, but what i think he meant was 2 separate enclosed cooling systems, like two small ones instead of one large one joining at the exits and at the entry points. Then he went off to ask if the car was Italian or German, dam that old man i love him. I will keep plugging at him to see what other ideas he might have that could help.

Great lesson, Jim. I'll be interested to see how yours sorts out.

 

FWIW, the little Honda rad I use is just about exactly half the size of the original Subaru Legacy rad it's doing the work of. Two-core instead of one but, as you said, that doesn't double the cooling capacity.

 

My application works--or seems to, so far, anyway--because I'm running a bone stock, 137-hp normally-aspirated EJ22 engine, and running it in a car that weighs 1000 pounds less than the car it came out of. 

 

Having a big, open upright grill up at the front of the car where it belongs is also a plus. I've got the larger of the two original Suby fans pulling behind it, into an aluminum shroud that ducts the air down and out the front wheel wells. The faster I go, the more pressure hits the front of the rad, which is also snugly-fit and insulated against the sides and top of the front bonnet, forcing that air through. 

 

If I turbo'd my engine I guess this system would fail, and because there is no more radiator room up front, I'd be in what the engineers call a technical pickle. 

 

Similarly, I'm guessing your cooling system would work just fine at 180 or 200 horse. Maybe even 230 . . .

Rocky (Yo Adrian), the front-mounted heat exchangers are for the water/air inter cooler, not engine water cooling.  Even so, I considered aluminum pipes, with a few water jacket portions as you mentioned, but in the end I was too concerned about vulnerability, since the pipes are fairly exposed running fore and aft.  I went with a sturdy rubber water line that should be able to take a direct hit and survive a foreign object, curb, etc.  It's all about trade-offs, eh?  Hood cowls have their own issues with turbulence, water intrusion, etc., so I opted for NACA ducts instead, which don't flow quite as much air, but don't disturb laminar air flow and can be easily blocked if necessary in inclement weather with a tennis ball.

 

Ed, Yes, high pressure on the rad inlet side is important, but so is low pressure on the back side.  Engine compartments can build up air pressure to such an extent that no air will pass through the rad, since pressures fore and aft of the rad will equalize, if the engine compartment is closed, or nearly so.  Hood louvers on muscle cars and hood openings near the front windshield are two examples of owners trying to lower under hood pressure in order to increase pressure differential.  There seems to be several ways to skin this cat, none of which is a perfect fit.  Small changes, such as solid ducting around the rad which forces all air through the fins, is an example of a small change that merits big results.  I wish I had more natural scientific aptitude.  Many times I feel like the physical world is trying to speak to me, and I can't understand what it's saying. 

 

Next on the drawing board, if necessary, is to enlarge the horn grills slightly, which act as the opening ducts for the inter cooler heat exchangers.  I am also considering a Davies-Craig or Lingenfelter electric water pump, either as an auxiliary to the engine-driven water pump or a direct replacement.  Davies-Craig even has an electronic module that can be set for upper and lower water temp ranges, regulating water flow, much like the standard t-stat, which is removed along with the stock water pump.  Lots of electric gadgets in my future, so I added a 270 Amp alternator that puts out 100 Amps at idle.  It's only money, right?

Jim, have you ever considered getting rid of the turbo?

Hi Ron,

 

No, my plan is to figure out how to go faster, and the turbo is a big part of Subi power.  I know it complicates things, but that just makes me try harder.

Add that auxiliary pump and let her rip, that should drive more water through the rad and get more surface area cooled faster. I still think a front rad set up is what is needed you would forgo all the fancy stuff that brings smaller incremental changes.

Ray,

 

A front-mounted rad would indeed make things easier, but it's not possible in my case without cutting the whole car apart and starting over with a smaller fuel cell.  I have a 16-gallon fuel cell in the front that leaves no room for a rad or even ducting to one.  There is literally no room between the body and the fuel cell, and no room under the tank.  

 

There is room as you move outboard, hence the heat exchangers for the w/a inter cooler in the front wheel wells.  Design parameters don't make things easy.  It's much like the forward rads in the newer water-cooled P cars.

move those intercoolers to the back wheel well, and put two rads one behind each headlight instead.  Or, do the boxter thing, two rads or at least, with vents on the side of the car  

Thx, Ray, moving the i/c's to the rear and positioning rads in the front is a great idea and something I'll explore, as well as an electric water pump if necessary.

This has to be one of the all-time classic thread-drift/thread hijacks. From "how do I get these pesky door handles off" to "hey, you know you ought to re-engineer your insanely complicated, bleeding-edge 300 hp turbo mid-engine cooling system. Here's how."

 

Let's make this thread a sticky in case anyone ever casually asks for an example of "The Madness."