whip

so i thought a good performance upgrade to my s4 88 would be an aluminum radiator, long story short i bought an aftermarket rad from cx racing i was told to be a direct bolt in turned out it was not even close it was like they made if for another car almost, only two out of the four bolts line up and after some research even there own pictures show it not bolting all the way up 4 holes, and only 2 bolts go in, the fan shroud must be not trimmed a lil but excessively, the hoses do not come anywhere neaar fittiing on this rad, they don't line up at all even with trimming had to search for the right shapes and bended hoses only for them stsill to have slight kinks, i want a perfect fit i want it to bolt on properly, i want a freaking coolant level sensor on my rotary engined car!, i have spoke to cxracing and a local performance shop i bought it from neither one are willing to help me with a refund or to find me the right hoses (because they dont exist) basically cx has told me well we buy it from someone else its not a 350 dollar rad, AKA ITSAPIECEOFBLEEP and ur skrood. lesson learned cheap is cheap if your going to upgrade dont get a low end upgrade it wont be an upgrade im extremely frustrated at this point, this rad basically blew my first motor, and now im on my 3rd second one didnt pan out because of a water seal that blew under high heat cycle but tested fine out of the car. so anyways i just want this horribly engineered and manufactured piece of crap out of my car and i want a different one it seems im going to have to take these people to court or take it as a loss.

what radiators have u had the best experience with best fit, least amount of modification best performance etc. i still would like an aluminum radiator but all this has made me wanna buy an oem one.

Baldy

Koyo is sold by both racing beat and mazdatrix. I'm sure it's a safe bet.

whip

tthanks thats probably my best bet. i think im gonna go with a brand new oem one and call it a day, already have found bad stuff about koyos even just dont wanna risk it sometimes when u have problems u have to go back to the last thing u changed everything started with this radiator, i miss the annoying coolant light and the perfect fit.

rx_214

I had my Koyo since last year and has not ran into any issues, it fits with the OEM radiator bracket so fit shouldn't be much issue, except the OEM fan shroud is pushed in a little. What bad stuff did you find about Koyo?

The best one that many people uses is Fluidyne, that one is around $500 but high quality. I have not heard anyone say negative things about it or run into issues. You could order it from Rotary Performance: Rotary Performance | FC Engine Cooling

There is also the Corksport one: CORKSPORT 'Power Series' Aluminum Radiator For RX7
They used to have a fan shroud that goes with it... but [they said] FC is less popular now so they have been cutting back and discontinuing a lot of parts for it. Corksport is still a good choice regardless for an quality radiator that's around $300.

whip

thanks for the advice i just watched a quick video of a guy showing his koyo rad with many leaks and that they would not stand by their product which is what im going through now with this other company so i want to avoid that headache, and go with what i know works OEM. the radiator is such a simple piece i just dont get how they could have designed it so bad, i have no problem with trimming the fan shroud a bit or removing brackets or even only two bolts lining up my problem is finding proper hoses and i want a coolant level sensor. how hard is it to make the rad the same as oem except aluminum and slightly larger i just dont get it. my patience has run dry and oem is looking pretty nice. i just dont know for sure if the new radiator caused increased pressure or if it was the hoses not lining up perfectly underpressure that caused them to rupture in the first place, i know the aftermarket radiator cap is 1.3 vs .9 stock so that would raise the boiling point of the coolant and raise the pressure, i do not want excessive pressure i like 13b to survive. i am very new at this stuff so bare with my newbiness but i just cant figure out what seemed to be causing the problems i had other than the new radiator.