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Project water cooled

flatfourfanflatfourfan
Well many may know that I was planning a type 4 (4 cam lookalike motor) and in the intrim was using my engine builders type 4 so that I could get the car around to get stuff done. A few moons passed and the type 4 was acting up an air leak was suspected and was prompty sorted out, intake studs were stripped. In the year and a half or so that I had the motor I put on a little over 900miles because I didn't like driving the car in the current state, it even came to the point that I wanted to sell her.

Then after speaking to a friend he suggested a 2.0 upright 4 banger from a VW polo. Total price with adapter kit, (locally made by GILO) was a little under $1000.00.

Disadvantages:
1) Well it's no aircooled motor and popping the hood will not be as impressive as what was planned for it in the first place.
2) There is a lot of work to get everything where it's supposed to go, I want the radiator in the back, fans, oil cooler and battery, ECU.

Advantages:
1) I have a working 2.0 motor from a written off polo going in, that cost me R3500 and it has less than 50 000km on the clock, with the adapter plate, stock management I'm still south of $1000
2) The only person that I honestly trust to work on my type 4 was me engine builder IMPI, and the fact that it's a round trip of about 600kms, going watercooled puts at least 25 people within 20minutes from my house that can do anything serious to it.
3) 125bhp and 172nm torque on a stock motor before doing anything to it.
4) Fuel consumption of anywhere between 10 and 15km/litre. This obviously is down to gearing, which will mean a visit to Bugger.
5) Cheap parts - A service kit can be had for a few hundred and the motor is simple enough for anyone to work on. Plus I can get the parts 5 minutes from my house.
6) This is being built to drive, not to go to shows. As my life priorities have changed over the last few years, so is what I wanted out of the car. With married life, 2 kids, playing in a band and have more hobbies than a toy store owner, I want to be able to just wipe her down, climb in and then go for a looooong cruise without thinking if I forgot to set something or tinker on something else?
7) The gearbox will have a cross member on top, which will allow me to lift her up an inch or so to get the rear down some more.
8) Service kit on a type 4 would cost me a little over $300 and would pretty much have to be imported.


1955 Kit Car Centre(Speedster)

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flatfourfanflatfourfan
Well many may know that I was planning a type 4 (4 cam lookalike motor) and in the intrim was using my engine builders type 4 so that I could get the car around to get stuff done. A few moons passed and the type 4 was acting up an air leak was suspected and was prompty sorted out, intake studs were stripped. In the year and a half or so that I had the motor I put on a little over 900miles because I didn't like driving the car in the current state, it even came to the point that I wanted to sell her.

Then after speaking to a friend he suggested a 2.0 upright 4 banger from a VW polo. Total price with adapter kit, (locally made by GILO) was a little under $1000.00.

Disadvantages:
1) Well it's no aircooled motor and popping the hood will not be as impressive as what was planned for it in the first place.
2) There is a lot of work to get everything where it's supposed to go, I want the radiator in the back, fans, oil cooler and battery, ECU.

Advantages:
1) I have a working 2.0 motor from a written off polo going in, that cost me R3500 and it has less than 50 000km on the clock, with the adapter plate, stock management I'm still south of $1000
2) The only person that I honestly trust to work on my type 4 was me engine builder IMPI, and the fact that it's a round trip of about 600kms, going watercooled puts at least 25 people within 20minutes from my house that can do anything serious to it.
3) 125bhp and 172nm torque on a stock motor before doing anything to it.
4) Fuel consumption of anywhere between 10 and 15km/litre. This obviously is down to gearing, which will mean a visit to Bugger.
5) Cheap parts - A service kit can be had for a few hundred and the motor is simple enough for anyone to work on. Plus I can get the parts 5 minutes from my house.
6) This is being built to drive, not to go to shows. As my life priorities have changed over the last few years, so is what I wanted out of the car. With married life, 2 kids, playing in a band and have more hobbies than a toy store owner, I want to be able to just wipe her down, climb in and then go for a looooong cruise without thinking if I forgot to set something or tinker on something else?
7) The gearbox will have a cross member on top, which will allow me to lift her up an inch or so to get the rear down some more.
8) Service kit on a type 4 would cost me a little over $300 and would pretty much have to be imported.


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  • bare dummy
  • adapter
  • engine in
flatfourfanflatfourfan
So this weekend, I dropped all my projects and went to my fibreglass buddy and promptly dropped in the dummy motor, adapter plate and the intake/ exhaust so that I could check for clearence issues. I'm over the moon. Besides the fact I chose the WORST time of the year to start this as pretty much everyone is closed for Christmas, it gives me time to plan out everything that needs to be done. Now that the dummy engine is in, I can have the exhaust done as well as mounts for the radiator (out back), Radiator will be a dual core jobbie from a civic as well as it's fan and cowling. We will be fabbing ducting from the rear quarter to go through the radiator. The intake manifold will have it's intake blocked off and done on the other side so that will buy me some more space to install a stock VW polo air intake, overflow tank out back and I'm pretty much done. The last to be installed will be the motor, but we will pretty much everything in place, so that as soon as I get the motor, I can do a service, cam belt swap etc and then put some miles on it as I have a month to find out if it has issues or now.

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  • empty bay
  • engine clearance
FM Former Member
Gary, there are a lot of us over here on this side of the Atlantic who feel like help is pretty far away sometimes. You must feel like you're on a different planet most of the time, huh?

Good for you for not only sourcing an ideal engine and such, but for taking the extra step of balancing what you wanted out of the car mid-stream. I remember when you first got started, and how you weren't daunted even a little bit by doing bodywork to make things work better.

My hat's off, man. If you ever get to Washington, I'll be buying your beverages in exchange for stories about some of the stuff you've done to that car!
flatfourfanflatfourfan
Barry - Oh there is no doubt that I can get it to work, my friend has done this conversion in the back of a beetle a few times already and I have about double the space to do the same amount of work. Even the radiator support, overflow bottle, air filter box is all basically simple fab work. I picked up my civic dual core radiator today as well as the cowl and fan set up for a little over $50, so work on the mounts can start soon. I even have enough space for 2 silencers and a muffler back there.

Cory - You have NO idea how we look at the US and drool as to what you can order and how easy it all is. There are perks to living here though that few people see. Labour is pretty cheap and many guys are in trades that would be pretty much dead anywhere else in the world. We get 8-9 months of gorgeous sunshine and winters where I can easily still drive with the top down with no worries.

I'm fortunate to have great friends who will help me out at the drop of a hat. My body man Willem has been a mate of mine for years and never expects anything in return and he's agreed to help me with anything I need as long as I learn to do it myself, which is fine by me. Even my old engine builder (IMPI) went out of his way to fit and loan me a type 4 to get the car rolling. He built a great motor, but at the end of the day he lives 300kms away and if I had any issues, then the down time would kill me. The issues I had with his loaner motor appear to originate from my lack of knowledge of it and also a carb washer being dropped into the intake manifold.

The same if you're ever in the Capital of South Africa.
David Stroud IM Roadster DDavid Stroud IM Roadster DOttawa Canada '83 IM Soob
I'm very interested to hear more of your progress when it's available, Gary. I was going to sling a Jeep Cherokee rad across the rear end up and ahead of the rear bumper but it became to close to my aftermarket exhaust header so I moved the whole shebang up front and the rad is now slung onto the front bumper brackets. This necessitated long runs of al. tube to get the coolant forward but it seems to work well. I'm envious of how an inline four can take up so little space and leave room for a rad right where it should be. Keep us posted.
FM Former Member
Garry this may be a stupid question... but are you safe driving a convertible in SA, when l was there last the car jackings were getting pretty bad ... your right about the US, even from Australia we look and dream about what they have....and we dont
by the way, my kit started life in SA
flatfourfanflatfourfan
David - This is the main reason that we're doing the rad out back as I want short water lines, I could of run the pipes down the side as I have an overhang where the pipes can fit inside, but the plan of action is as short as possible and everything in the back (if possible).

Barry - Once I'm done with the engine swap, I'll jump back into the steering wheel. If you're happy with the work done on mine, then we can talk, it's not going to be in the next 3-4 months though as we're having some building done at casa del gary, so all my attention is going to that and my speedy engine swap as this stage.

Bill - Nah, not really it gets a lot of looks, but it's for the right reasons. Car jackings are mainly done with cars that can be chopped, stripped or sold of without causing too much fuss. BMW's, SUV's and and low end budget cars that can be sold for parts. But if someone wants it, I wouldn't put up a fight, I've got it insured for the full value of what I will have in it, (about 15k US). So I can build another one, but I don't think like it's going to get stolen, I just enjoy driving it.

Ps, someone actually did this before, but I have no idea as to why theirs looks so cramped, maybe the engine compartments on South African speedsters are a bit wider. Because I have place for everything back there, including the radiator down the side. I also want to fit a stock VW polo airbox back there as well as I don't like the chrome pipe with a cone on idea that many seem to adopt.

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  • 002-vi
oldyeleroldyeler
One thing to remember you get what you pay for the IM frame is a race car quality frame. It's ridged and is also offered with the 911 front end. One of the most versitle setups I have seen. So well worth the cost. if your realy serious about a strong 356.. thats the one to have..

Im impress with the watercooled setup. this is the first one Ive seen.
Those engines used DTI injection another real nice option I'd have to have that on it. They are tough..
flatfourfanflatfourfan
Marty...........it's either pay someone to do the work, which I tried, or learn to do the work yourself. If I would of known what to do on the type 4, then maybe I wouldn't of had the issues that I had.

Luckily my friend is prepared to teach me what I need to know and will help me to do what needs to be done. I have a pretty average mechanical knowledge when it comes to cars, but I'm keen to learn.

I like the inter set up front and it looks like they ran the lines down the side of the car like I thought.

If anyone has seen a civic radiator, then you can see that it's half the size of the one that inter uses. Dual core, triple or quad core makes all the diffs.

No work done today, spent the afternoon putting together my daughters first bicycle from about 300 parts. And I had to do it in the confines of the spare room, cause a 5 year old knows when something is up.

flatfourfanflatfourfan
An update............got the first parts of the exhaust mocked up today. I was hoping that my mandrel bends would arrive for my downpipe, but alas they didn't so I had the shop bend me up a pipe that would fit so that I could at least get an idea of where eberything will run.

My request was simple..........totally tucked up, totally stealth and I wanted a big box at the back as I wanted it quiet. I didn't wnat any exhaust hanging down as I still want to lift the gearbox and I want the back of the car down lower......about 3-4".

One body mod that I am going to do is to cut a big slot out the back of the speedster behind the bumper as I want to be able to get as much heat out of the engine bay as possible, once it's been covered in mesh and painted with the bumper back on, you won't notice anything.

There is actually so much space back there, the radiator should fit no problem and I'm actually going to try something fancy to get her sloted in so she looks factory. Pics will follow next week.

Then it's mounting the overflow tank as well as the airbox assembly set up and I can start mock up on the high pressure fuel lines, fuel filter and all the brackets to hold everything and I will be able to fit the motor.


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  • bottom exhaust
  • side exhaust
flatfourfanflatfourfan
Some drama this weekend.

Managed to build the radiator surround and get that out of the way, but then noticed that I had rear frame rail issues.

I'll snap some pics tonight, but basically the frame rail on the drivers side was totally loose from the body, the rivets used weren't doing any use to anyone as well as where it was tied into the firewall area. So I'm first going to have to address this issue before I do anything else.

This explains why the body of the car actually felt loose in places, turns out that it actually was, oh well at least I know once it's done, it'll be done properly.

It also looks like we are going to move the radiator as well. The side option is do-able, but my fibreglass fundi who's helping me with the conversion said that it's going to be WAY easier to get more airflow if we mount the radiator facing forward.

I will be losing some storage space in my rear compartment, but as long as there is enough space for the battery back there I'm fine with that. We have a head scratching session this Saterday and hopefully the radiator will finally be in.

Stay tuned.

flatfourfanflatfourfan
A set back of sorts............The radiator will not get enough flow in the back. Managed to contact a few people who've tried it in a speedster and they all come back with the same line.

It don't work and getting it to work half as good as if it were in front would take a serious amount of work and a lot of chopping on the car.

I'm a bit depro now because of the news, my buddy says that we can make it work, but I'm a bit nervous about doing the whole swap, mounting everything out back and end up with a car that runs hot or worse yet.........blows a head gasket and then just having to do it all over again.

So, a reorganisation of sorts. Radiator upfront, still staying with the Dual core civic radiator because of it's size, but I'm going to have a custom fuel tank made that will allow me to move it against the firewall and then allowing me to mount my spare on top and in front of the tank. Allowing the space where the spare wheel was, to be used for the radiator. I want it inclosed properly, I don't want to half ass this.

I'm going to build everything similar to the PGO Speedster. That will allow a clean look, with minimal mods. At the end of the day, it's just fibreglass. My scoop will be a bit smaller as I'm using a half size radiator.

http://www.carw.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/pgo-speedster-003.jpg

Copper pipes for the coolant lines incased in black rubber tubes will run the length of the car in the door channels. With the fuel lines on the opposite side.

Bit of a set back, but this will now give me some more space to mount the air filter set up as well as the expansion tank.



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