its it really as shitty as, off with the turbo and swap it that way


thanks

mike

 

It IS a proper cunt

I took airbox off, unhooked rad, dropped the bottom left hand side down an wiggled it out to the right at an angle over the metering unit, it will come out with a bit of a struggle and slight damage to some fins from the top. lots of swear words too
dunno if it will come out from the bottom, never tried

 

It is a bit tricky, but you dont need to remove the turbo. First of all remove the following:

Crossover pipe, boost hoses and intercooler. Next unscrew the fan from the rad. Then disconect the rad pipes etc and drain the coolant. You can now start removing the rad. Basically, you slide the rad along towards where the intercooler was angleing it back and up. Raising the intercooler side first. It is a very tight fit and it might be an idea to get a very thing piece of ply wood or card against the rad as it slides past the turbo. Trust me, it does go though.

Good luck!"

 

This has to be one of my favourite jobs to do on a MK3





























Directly below doing clutch pedal quadrants

 

no chance of getting a s2 pro alloy intercooler with twin fans in before the new rad then? my rad shit it'self last night and i thought while it was all out, ect ect ect

 

You may be able to squeeze it in, if your rad is fucked then just rag it out, but its just as hard re-fitting a new rad without damaging it.

Would be best to drop the turbo out if you can IMO

 

thanks, i might put an engine lifter on the engine and take the mountings off, that way i can push the engine back in the bay to get some more room.

i'll put it in the garage tomorrow and start the swareing

 

Would be a lot easier to remove the turbo rather than drop all the mounts off

 

isnt it really jus the actuator/bracket it hits off?

 

Exactly the way I did it - don't forget the cardboard and prepare for grazed knuckles

 

we used the top of a biscuit tin to slide past the turbo. also helps to loosen the alternator to give a bit more room. But yes, tis a serious pain in the arse. Started to seriously consider selling the car for spares half way through.

(My rad mounting dropped through so it hit the turbo and split. Sourced another new one for cash . Got this in, new coolant etc, fired the car up and this one is split as well. But as a cash purchase, no comeback, so had to rip it out again, get it repaired and refit. 2 fun weekends. )

 

indeed its easy, you do not need to take the turbo off.ive got some pics some where will post them up.

use hard board that is parcel taped to the rad so you dont damage it against the actuator bracket.

put it this way i took out and put back a aluminium rad that cost near Ł300 and as long as your carefull and use hard board it easy.

 

undo the top retaining bolts/screws

undo the fan bolts so its free on the rad.

this is how you get it out but you need to put the piece of hard board on teh turbo side of the rad.

and bingo its out.

its easy, that was an old s1 i was restoring.

 

 

top advice guys cheers.

i'll have a pop at it over the weekend i think

 

i think i remember taking the rad out through the front panel where the grill sits

 

i think u can only do that on a mk4

 

u can pull it out the front on a mk4, relatively easy job tbh but it doesn't look like theres enough space on the mk3

 

Depends how mint your car is aswell in my opinion, granted you can pretty much wiggle anything out of anywhere but if youve got a nice tidy car your not guna want to be scraping rad past everything and damaging all the paint etc.

The proper way would be to remove the turbo and it will come out nicely and easily..........

 

does a s2 rad fit in a s1, i have a watercooled turbo on it but im not sure about the rad, the bloke i got it off said it was an s2 rad but someone told me you couldn't fit a s2 rad in a s1????

 

Its also more of a pain if you have a front mount i/c as the pipework gets in the way. Really not something to do unless you HAVE to!!!!

 

like i said i did it with a rad that was near on Ł300, and my s1 is mint.

theres no need to take off the turbo and to be honest theres more chance of slipping taking the turbo off and causeing damage to the rad that way imo.

anyone whos got a minty mint s1 knows about protecting the paint work when doing jobs, it doesnt take 5 mins to put a few layers of masking tape down to protect things then a layer of gaffer tape on top of that.

you may have to put a few layers on the inside top lip of the front panel as there is very little clearance there when taking the rad out.

let us know how you got on transit van man

 

You can fit a S2 rad in a S1, ive got one in my cabby mainly cos Series radiators are ridiculously big and force the intercooler right over to a place where you get hardly an air flow.

I had to make all the brackets up to mount it though, not sure i would do it again............but was worthwhile after all

 

nice one thanks, well its the weekends project so i'll post some pictures up of how i get on. by the sounds of it i will need the duck tape for my mouth, theres little kids next door and we don't esactly see eye to eye with them anyway, mainly because i let my turbo cool down for 10mins at 2am but that besides the point. im sure they would love me to teach there 4 year old all the words under the sun