Any successful radiator in engine compartment conversions?, Or other than front trunk installs? Options

[Mueller]

I know this had been tried 7+ years ago, I was wondering if since then has anyone done a watercooled conversion and not put the radiator in the front trunk?

[DBCooper]

Cool, this thread came back. In the meantime I ran across a thread (titled "Subaru Engine") at www.spyderclub.com that traced one of their car's evolution of radiator placement. The 550's have the same rear transmission mid-engine layout, are going more Subaru, and their owners would also prefer to keep everything in the engine compartment. This is one car's iterations and an eerie parallel to what we've also seen:

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But the basic evolution:
1: Mcrae with an little 1.8lt Subaru turbo engine and gearbox
Radiator mounted above the engine under the rear grills, no intercooler.
Found that I always had a engine temp problems, I never had on the track at that point.
Eventually the overtemp took its toll and the little 1.8 failed.

2: EJ20T and stock 2WD gearbox
Stock radiator mounted in front of the engine and about 3" gap to the fire wall.
Never going to get the cooling but good try.
Stock intercooler mounted under the rear grills.
Stock ECU rechipped to remove the speed limiter. 12.4 ET @ 180kph

3: Small 2" chin scoop behind the radiator under the car, still not engough cooling and now super sprinting the car.
Aftermarket ECU
Still overtemp after several laps, intake temps would also increase due to poor heat transfer between the stock intercooler and grill airflow.
Stock 2WD gearbox with open diff goes bang but it took 2 seasons of hillclimbs and lots of passes at the strip.

4: Add 2 cutouts behind the seats with ducting to radiator to increase the air flow, still kidding myself, that's just not enough.

5: Ring lands failed on several pistons.
Rebuild the 2ltr but now use a NA 2.5 block with new 2.5ltr STI rods and pistons and 2ltr heads, replace original auto turbo with a manual turbo 13lbs boost.
Convert an STI CR gearbox to 2WD using the 2WD rear casing stock and STI LSD.
Move the new alloy radiator to the front of the car, use 1 1/8" aluminium tubing and silicon bends etc, cut out the oil grills, alloy ducting enclosing the radiator.
Mounted a large alloy front mount intercooler in the front of the engine in the place of the old radiator used stock aftermarket front mount alloy intercooler pipework.
Turbo inlet via a CF box above the engine taking in air from one rear grill.
10.4 ET @ 125mph.
Radiator outlet was just flowing into the hood area, after 20 or so laps the temps in the hood area and the fuel tank would increase, fuel surge pot would be red hot.

6: Enclose the rear of the radiator and duct out the front wheel wells.

7: Super reliable, go out and run at full boost all day, scare the locals.
last time I was out we were lapping 2 up (wife likes to drive but not shotgun) with a second level V8 super car, he had much better corner speed but we would pull up to him on the straight and poke our nose out as if to pass, had his pit crew hanging over the pit wall wondering what the hell this little car was. :-\"
Only thing I think I would do now is convert to an air/water barrel intercooler with front mount radiator, just a lot more compact and would restore the firewall to stockish.
Photos to follow. Cheers from downunder.

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