what's happening everybody it's Justin welcome back to the BTR Garage today
we're gonna continue the race prep on my 1994 BMW 325is this is my dedicated
track car my time attack car and this year we're doing a lot of upgrades to it
in today's episode we're going to be upgrading the cooling system a vital
part to any race car or street car for that matter we have a racing radiator an
aftermarket electric fan and some new radiator hoses and thermostat as well
let's show you what we've got and get started with the installs all right
first things first what parts did we get we have the racing radiator from CSF
ultimate performance cooling and race high-performance off-road hopefully as
little off-road as possible in my car trying to keep it mostly on the street
let's get this thing out of the box here so this is an all aluminum radiator
versus the OEM radiator that comes on BMWs which are well known to fail after
age and if you guys remember some years back when I was autocrossing my BMW I
did actually have the radiator fail at an autocross and it spewed coolant all
over the autocross course it was actually not that funny one of my
buddies that owns the race shop up here that I'd go take my car to was doing the
run behind me and got all kinds of squirrely because of the coolant being
on the course and I don't think he was too happy about that but um everybody
was safe so anyways we are gonna be replacing that junker with this guy and
so far it looks pretty cool see if we can get this part off here and give you
guys a close-up of what it looks like
so there we go CSF all aluminum racing radiator aluminum end tanks so on the
OEM radiators which I have behind the car over here these end tanks are in
caps if you want to call them they're actually plastic and BMW being well
known for their not so awesome plastic that gets brittle and hard and breaks
and falls apart over time this is a nice upgrade so aluminum end caps on both
sides and of course you have the nice CSF logo on this guy which looks really
cool set this aside here and to complement the CSF radiator we have a
new Spal 16 inch high performance electric fan you guys might have seen
the video where I showed you how to wire this thing up to your auxilary fan
wiring on the car that comes from the factory so we've got that guy which will
attach to the back of the radiator we have Mishimoto radiator hoses so nice
high quality radiator hoses and we have a new thermostat to replace the OEM one
pretty straightforward I don't want to lose the washer there thermostat that
goes into the side of the radiator this one is meant to turn on the fan at a
lower temperature so you have less chance of overheating the car and the
fan is doing a little more work to help keep the car cool so we're gonna go
ahead and start getting things installed the radiator replacements is pretty
straightforward they more or less just drop right into the front frame of the
car and as you guys know from my video a few weeks ago or a couple weeks ago I've
already taken everything out of the car the front of the car is totally empty
other than the fan shroud and the overflow tank so we're gonna have to get
the radiator in there and then line up the fan and figure out where we're gonna
mount the fan to the radiator and then pull the radiator out mount the fan put
it all back in and then tighten everything down and then get the hoses
on pretty simple process and kind of put the time-lapse on and show you any snags
that we have but let's get to work
so the radiator is now kind of mocked up in place it's not fully secured or
anything and as you can see it just kind of drops into place here and then the
fan shroud has little clips or pins that guide it into place and then the
radiator has slots for it to sit on the radiator just like the OEM one but what
I need to do now is fish the fan back there and kind of trace where it's gonna
go or fits inside the opening of the fan shroud so I place it in the correct spot
that way I won't have to cut up my fan shroud and what I think I'm gonna do is
actually unclip the fan shroud from the radiators so I can pull it away let's
see how I can do this here and get the fan in behind the fan shroud why are you
stuck all right so there we go and I probably somehow I got to get this guy
back in there there that works okay now once the fan is back in there you can
kind of move it around and figure out where you need to mount it on the
radiator in order for it to be centered here in the fan shroud and on the
radiator itself it looks like I have it in a decent position so what I'm gonna
do is grab my magic marker and just kind of trace around the radiator where I
want it to go
all right now that that is traced you take everything back out again
so with the radiator outs and our guidelines marks we can take our fan and
our mounting kit and actually we're not going to lay the fan on there just yet
we have these little pads that go in between the radiator and the fan so it
has a soft kind of cushion to it so what we're gonna do is pull the sticky off of
these guys and put these underneath where the fan is going to be placed make
sure we have it lined up just about rights and we're gonna place the little
pads underneath where the holes are
now the little tie-downs that we have to hold the fan in place these little guys
is just almost like a zip tie straight pull type of zip tie with a cap and what
you do is you take these things and you just slide them through the fins on the
radiator very gently of course so we're gonna start by pushing these down
through to the other side it's gonna hit the cardboard on the bottom which is
fine when it starts these and of course my kit that I got came with one tie-down
that was already busted which is convenient so I have three ties instead
of the floor so now we can go ahead and flip the radiator over make sure the fan
doesn't go move all over the place and we can start pushing through the
other tie-downs or pulling them through
and I actually did use a zip tie for this other one now what I'm gonna do is
flip this over while holding the fan alright now we have the other side of
the radiator exposed grab our little cushions take off the sticky backs and
put these over each of the tie-downs
you know once everything is on there we take our little round caps and then
these just slide down and lock into place pull them a little bit snug not
super tight and now our fan should be secured you can see it's on there nice
and snug we're not smashing the fan on to the
radiator fins that is a good snug and secure setup snip off the backs and that
is ready to go
and before we throw the radiator and fan back in here we'll go ahead and put
these new Mishimoto radiator hoses on so those are in place and easier to get to
the rest of the stuff still being out
and then the fun part of getting the radiator fitted back in here so let's
get it going
all right that was mostly painless went in pretty easy and I just kind of got to
get everything lined up here all right so we just about have things wrapped up
we have the radiator hoses installed and I just realized when I was putting
everything back together I put them on the wrong side so I had to go and take
them off switch sides and get it reattached so not a huge deal but do pay
attention when you're putting your hoses on that you put them on the correct side
so we have the hoses tightened up got the first sensor on down here I've got
the rubber grommets that fit in the top of the radiator that attach to these
clips in place as well so that keeps the radiator nice and solid in place and
really the only thing left we have to do is install the new temperature sensor
into the side of the radiator I already pulled out the plug that was in there
first and obviously this is a pretty straightforward step take out the plug
put the sensor in there and we'll Snug it down a little bits there we go and
once that is snug down we just need to connect our connector and there we go
we're pretty much done at this point I do have to add obviously water to the
radiator for the cooling of the car we don't put actual antifreeze into race
cars what we do put in the cars is distilled water along with some redline
water wetter so this solution helps to keep the engine cool and the coolant
cool and that's the solution that we add to the distilled water you don't add
this to actual radiator fluid or coolant rather so we'll put that aside and I got
to go get some distilled water I don't have any so I can fill up the radiator
and do the bleeding today so we'll save that for a different day this job is
pretty much done let's take a closer look at the finished product
all right everybody so that does it for this video we have the CSF racing
radiator installed the spouse high-performance electrical fan we got
the new thermostat installed as well and we can't forget the Mishimoto radiator
hoses so I think our cooling system is in good shape we've got a lot more work
to do still so stick around for new videos coming up real soon if you have
any thoughts comments or questions like always please leave them down below I
would love to hear from you don't forget to stay fast out there I am checking out
and we'll talk to you all next time