Cooling

The more power that an engine produces the more waste heat it will also generate. In some applications this is easily dealt with but in most cases some additional modifications are required.

Top hose thermostat holder The thermostat arrangement on the standard K series engine is designed to give a rapid warm up and then to maintain a fairly high running temperature. For an unmodified engine in a standard road car this is quite reasonable but for a race engine, where there is much more heat being generated, the standard system can lead to problems. This situation is exaggerated further still when the system incorporates a remote radiator as in, for example, the Lotus Elise. The standard thermostat installation can give rise to a flow where the coolant is cycling through the pump and the engine but is not being directed towards the radiator. This happens as a result of the thermostat reacting to the temperature of the cooled water from the radiator rather than the heated water from the engine. Removing the original thermostat, and fitting our thermostat holder in the top hose can eliminate these effects. Our thermostat holder is available with a range of pre-fitted thermostats to give opening temperatures more suitable for competition use.

For more details about our remote thermostat kit please download the fitting instructions. (you will need a PDF reader to view this file)

With the more highly tuned engines we have seen the potential for problems with engine oil overheating. Traditionally the solution to this problem would be an oil-to-air heat exchanger. For best effect this would mean mounting an additional radiator in the air flow at the front of the car but for rear engined applications like the Elise or MGF this then requires oil lines running the length of the car. Instead we offer a oil-to-water heat exchanger for a much easier installation, mounted within the engine bay.
As well as being a relatively simple fitment, the oil-to-water heat exchanger makes use of the waste heat from the oil for rapid engine warm up.

A sandwich plate is fitted to divert oil flow from the filter to a laminar flow heat exchanger. The heat exchanger itself locates neatly inline with the return hose from the radiator.