ok, cracked my 92 sc400 radiator, tried to plastic weld it and although the 6" crack sealed it popped a new crack an inch above it. So I go to junk yard and pick one up for $50. I immediately knew it wasnt for my car since it had a radiator cap on it and it had metal end tanks. but I eyed it up and said meh I can make it fit. but now Ive run into a few issues I want to clarify.

1st what SC's came with a metal radiator? because my searching leads me to no answer.

What year did they switch to smaller diameter hoses? important because I cant fit my hoses and would like to try whatever year it changed.

if I use this radiator I will switch to a later version with a overflow since it has a cap. problem came when I noticed there is a hose from under thermostat to the stock reservoir. Can I simply cap this line?

thats about it. any advice is appreciated. I gotta do a bunch more but this will make the car driveable or sellable vs being a paper weight.


thank you

 

All factory radiators have plastic tops, oem replacements (like from autozone) sometimes have metal tops as an option. You might have to run a parts number to see what company it's made by to get more of the info you want.

 

True, I just found a thread similar with someone asking about theirs. So I know it's after market.

Still need to know about plumbing. When did they switch to thinner pipes on the radiator? So I can test fit hose from that year ( if it still fits motor).

And can I cap that return line from reservoir to under thermostat?

Already got hose to extend transmission lines and fit the sensor in bottom. There isn't a spot to plug in the battery tray tho but that's a pointless hole anyway imo

 

They never changed the piping size.

 

^ wrong, Australia. Sc400/soarer UZ has larger coolant lines than the 300 or jz powered soarers. I had some super awesome young black gentlemen in an econo jag on chariot wheels run me off the road in my 400 which lead to a popped radiator among many other crappy things. Found the difference when I grabbed my spare 300 parts car rad.

so. depends on how much you give a ****, but fwiw, I ran this setup for maybe 10k miles or more (I drive a lot, and I drive HARD) without a single issue.

Yes, need to plug that line from the bottom of the res.

I actually just put the rad hoses on and used the stock clamps. Sketchy, but ****, Quite a while, seriously 10k plus miles and they never gave. I actually used the sc400 shroud and it all pretty much bolted up for the most part to the 300 radiator.. The cooling fan fluid res stayed as did the little bracket, and the fan and everything. I pretty much had no choice. We had to use my friends sienna in the taco shop parking lot to ****** the **** out of the car to pull the core support out enough to even get the rad to fit. I was gonna actually go through and make all this right one day, but it worked, so I ran it.

The right way to do it would be to use the sc300 rad, then the front stuff from an ls400 and convert to mechanical fan. also, for the hoses I'd cut the hoses a bit short and try to make an adpater somehow using a piece of transition hose if you can find it, or maybe those transition exh pieces they sell at pepboys/wherever to step down/up exh and use the correct size hose from there. Probably cheapest. Either way, you won't find an off the shelf setup so make it cheap and easy on your self. The way I did it was meh, but the car is a total pile of **** and not worth the effort. So, my advice, take the route that reqiures the effort the car is worth. If it sucks and you hate it, do what I did. It'll work. If you wanna keep it, id try the exh adapters to see if theres one that would allow both hoses to fit on. One thing, this new radiator is definitely easier to burp for air than the stupid 400 one

 

Thanks for the help. I used stock hoses and a big copper adapter to make one of my rx7 hoses fit came out solid but ugly he.

Ran into a new problem, I will start a new thread on it because it's completely differnt