For this project, I ignored everything people had used for this swap and went my own route, because copying someone else would be to easy and make too much since.

-Finding a radiator

For this I decided that I would cut the nose despite what I originally intended. The motor mounts I ended up using (only 02’s)  would have made it very difficult to do so without cutting anything.

So that meant the sky was the limit as far as what I could try to get to fit in there. I calculated that I should be able to fit a rad that was around 30” wide and 14” tall. I did a quick summit racing search and found someone that left a review for a radiator exactly this size and they said it fit a 2004 celica GTS. I then went to autozone to pick the one they had in stock up, verified that it would be correct, it was, then returned it, went on ebay and bought an all aluminum race rad that was 2” thick for $100! Once it arrived the fab began!

Here is the autozone rad in place, clearly way too thin

The Ebay rad when I got it with cardboard mounts

And now the ebay rad fitment and figuring out the mounts I made, after I cut the stock vent and top mount pegs off.

I built some angled tabs out of steel that bolt to the frame rail, they have a stock GTS rad bushing installed in them, I angled the rad for max clearance to the engine.

For the top mounts I built some rectangles with rubber inside that retain the tops of the tanks and bolt to the remaining piece of the nose.

Now onto the plumbing!

I REALLY wanted to build the cooling hoses out of AN hose, but -16AN stuff is so expensive, and I decided to just try to use stock e30 hoses and figure out something for the other bits that didn't work with those.

I was able to use stock e30 hoses everywhere except where they connect into the rad. To make my life easier for the lower rad, I cut the stock m20 hard coolant pipe, and welded a pipe at a 45* angle, so that it points to the lower rad outlet rather than pointing below it that causes the need for a crazy hose like the stock one. The welded pipe and in the bead roller

Here are where the e30 hoses ended up with the new rad, not quite going to work

Off I went to O'reilly to search their collection of rad hoses in hopes of finding something that would work without too much modification or joining 2 hoses together (which drives me crazy).

And I found ‘em! Luckily the inlet/outlet are actually pretty close to the location of stock rad. Now if I need to replace a rad hose of the road, I'll be able to do it with an off the shelve part, not some custom hodgepodge.

The rad had two coolant drain screws, one on the top and one on the bottom. I used the one on the top, which happened to be right inline with my over flow reservoir, as the breather with a selection of AN fittings to get me to a right angles barb pointing to the reservoir. Nice and clean!

All plumbed up and mounted! (Click for video)