Might not be the best/smartest idea but has anyone ever modify your front bumper impact bar(Drill/cut holes) & grill to increase the airflow? I'm not talking about the bumper cover but making the whole front grill usedfull instead of only the lower half.

 

How about Slick 50? Heck if I were in your shoes I would be using anything to lessen friction= Heat.

 

I'm actually pulling the grill out of my stock front bumper tomorrow. I have a mazsport turbo kit and the fmic goes way up behind the blocked portion of the grill. Ideally, I'll dremel out the grill and put it back in, but I'm exceedingly lazy at times. If it doesn't look horrid (I have no front bumper support so that won't be an eyesore), I might go to RotorJam this weekend sans grill.

With the mazsport, obviously I am running an Int-x. I had not heard about them eating coolant sensors. The sensor still seems to work (it'll raise while idling) but it might be failing and getting worse or it might be poorly calibrated within the Int-X. Does the int-x trigger the fans its self? Or does it filter the signal to the stock ecu? Maybe I'll just hardwire the fans until I get it sorted. In other news, though, the mild humid NJ summer seems to agree with the car perfectly fine.

 

Only problem is is there is the front absorption cross bar there. No air is going to go past it. 90% of the air enters between the bottom of the grill and the lower lip. Any air flow improvements should be made through that opening.
What Mazda found out is that a lot of the air flow is going down the sides and under the radiator. So your loosing about 30% of the air going into the nose of the car down the sides and under the rad. Mazda sealed up the sides and bottom of the rad between the skid plate.
I was going down the freeway yesterday about 80 mph in 3rd gear about 4500 rpm. it was 97 degrees out. My coolant temps were at 189. So what Mazda did obviously improved on driving at speed.
The only other issue is going to be driving in stop and go traffic when it's 115 degrees out side.


I don't like Slick 50. You can use it but will not.

 

Mission failed

I tried to remove the thermostat, but the bolt behind the housing .... the position is just too gay to reach. I guess I need to get some smaller or thin wall Socket b4 I can replace it on my own. How did you remove yours anyway? I hate the T-stat's housing location, freaking gay crap.

Ahh, I just flush my system today by pouring some of those Prestone Flush stuff into my system. Flush it again with distilled water. then Add 50/50. This time I think I bleed my system correctly so, gonna take it out for a ride. be back in couple of hours

 

Can I just go get any foam for sealing AC/Heat pipes and just stick it on ?

Cuz it sounds like a pretty good mod thats cheap and easy to do.

 

Try and find something fairly dense and rigid. But still flexible. Preferably flat stock. A couple of inches thick and about a foot wide
That way you can shape it to fit. MM found some perfect foam in a Fabric/Craft store. (he has a side business we shouldn't talk about ) Try to find something in black as to not be to visible. And good luck.

 

His robots? Hell everyone knows he works with robots and leases them to shows. Or is the OTHER side business?

 

agreed--- a lower thermostat wont keep a car from overheating but it may help a little with catch up---besides i have been wanting one for a long time!
olddragger

 

..

I have removed the support for intercooler installation...and opened up the back of the grill...it can't help but improve the airflow..

Easiest way to open up the grill is to use sanding discs and grind the back off... and then trim up the melted bits with a razor knife

Using a Dremel on each little hole is maddening and very slow

 

Earlier today, when I was working on my car, starring at the front bumper like an idiot for like an minute. a question popped up inside my head.

"Since I already have Mazdaspeed front bumper, do I really need to keep the Racing Beat screen in there?"

Cuz right now is like

Air coming in from the front - Mazdaspeed Bumper's Screen - Racing Beat's Screen - A/C Condenser - Finally Radiator. Aye

hmm .... too bad Mazda's official screen cost too much(and I forgot its part number), at least it blocks only lower 1/2 air flow

oh guys, how did you take the thermostat housing off? with what tool ? cuz the bolt behind the housing ... I know its 12mm in size but the space is so damn tight none of my wrenches/whatever fits

 

i sold my rb screens when i got the ms bumper.

 

hmm ....

 

Well I drove from Phoenix to Vegas with MM yesterday. Cruising speeds were up and outside temp was down in the mid to upper 80's. Car ran real cool. 181 to 212 pulling a long hill at a high rate of speed. Most of the time she was cruising at 183- 187. Speed was above 80 mph. I can't say how fast I was going a few times but the car stayed cool the whole time.
The fix, I use that word lightly, that Mazda did seems to be a freeway speed cooling improvement so far. But there is nothing wrong with that.
Waitng to do some city driving in the heat.

 

Glad it is helping you some, Easy. Thanks for your service to the rotary community!

 

This is truly a great thread!

Paul.

 

That's troubling. Unless you had the by-pass blocked off somehow, the normal tendency is for the by-pass to dominate and keep circulating in the block rather than through the rad when there's no thermostat present. I'd recommend never removing the thermostat completely unless you're blocking the bypass which is real surgery. I've had personal experience of toasting a motor in half an hour driving with no thermostat.

Paul.

 

Let me clarify.
I didn't simply take the t-stat out.
First, I drilled holes in it. No difference.
Then, I riveted the valve open. No difference.
Then I cut the valve out of the body completely.No difference.
So, it essentially became a restrictor disk instead of a t-stat.

 

Paul, Thnx for the price.

I would use TX-7 before Slick 50.

 

Have you guys noticed that the larger '09 plastic front grille also seems to have a considerably larger amount of open space on it compared with previous years? Of course the oil coolers are also larger, but I haven't seen mention of the larger grille opening yet.

Not sure if you can still sort of see this in this reduced size poor quality phone pic ... maybe if you squint.

 

You were scaring me for a second there.

Paul.

 

the oil cooler looks larger! but the grill section has lots of not open spaces.. look close..

beers

 

Of course, it still has some closed spaces, but it has more open space (and differently shaped open space) than the old plastic grille. I don't know if that is accompanied by any other changes to airflow to make this more meaningful. I kinda doubt it, but Easy's personal Mazda engineering team was obviously looking at even minor improvements of directing airflow.

With regard to the separate issue of the oil coolers. I thought I'd read early on, months ago, in the first tidbits of information coming out about the 09s that the oil coolers are actually larger, ie, don't just look larger. Is that not ture?

 

the a/t car i saw and looked close at, the oil cooler did not appear any larger. The open parts of the grill were in the shape of a smile. if bigger, it is not by any noticable margin.
olddragger

 

What I'm referring to is a post by Zoom44 back in February that the oil coolers on the '09 would be "taller". Could be a misunderstanding:
With respect to the smile-shaped openning on the new plastic grile, it definitely looked like a bigger openning to me when I compared an '08 and an '09 side by side ... but, no, I did not actually measure. LOL, maybe I should count the number of open diamonds!