With the engine work complete and the engine bay tidied up, it is time to start work on the support systems (fuel delivery, air intake, ignition, cooling, etc.). First up is the cooling system.

I purchases an M-Tuned coolant re-route from Flyin’ Miata.  The reroute will move the exit of the coolant from the front of the engine to the back.  Since the coolant enters the engine block from the front, the re-route will allow for more even flow.   I am changing a few things around on the kit.

First, the coolant re-route is designed to work with a stock radiator.  The stock radiator inlet is on the passenger side of the car, and as such, the re-route is designed to have the coolant return line routed around the intake side of the engine.  Since I’ll have the throttle bodies there and wanted to clean up the bay as much as possible, I’m customizing the re-route to work with my custom radiator, which has the coolant return port on the driver side of the car.  That will keep all of the coolant lines on the driver/exhaust/”hot” side of the engine bay and away from the intake.

As it turns out, swapping the reroute around to work with my custom radiator wasn’t too difficult.  Since I only have one week to get the engine installed, broken in, and tuned on the dyno before my next track event (and the last one of the season), this install will be good enough for now (ie: reliable), but will likely change during the off-season (via the use of more aluminum tubes and less rubber hose).

PICTURES: Coolant Re-Route with Custom Radiator Parts