Today I wanted to do something easy to help me see more of the engine compartment. I do a fair amount of just staring at the thing, studying all the parts and trying to get as familiar as I can with the engine and its parts. Pictures and diagrams are one thing, but actually seeing and touching the real components can't be beat. Unless, of course, you happen to break them in the process. More on that later. Removing the radiator seemed like an easy enough task to tackle with the last bits of the weekend remaining.
The first thing to do was to remove the splash guard below the engine compartment. It's not really needed to drain or remove the radiator, but it's going to go anyway and removing it now will just make the rest of the job easier. I've done this before when I made a repair to it some months ago. The plastic must have hit something and tore, leaving a section dangling. I fixed it my taping it together with some Gorilla Tape. It worked surprisingly well. It was still together!
Draining the coolant wasn't difficult. The hardest part was collecting the used one gallon milk jugs to store the coolant (and other fluids) before taking them to the hazardous waste disposal site. :P Looking at the coolant drain made it look like my car was urinating. Heh. With the fluid drained, time to go after the hoses while the drainage tub was still underneath.
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| Hmmm, I think I'm going to need another one of those. |
Well, it looked sturdy enough, but when I went to remove the top radiator hose I realized just how brittle the top had become. I never seemed to have any problems with the radiator save for some slight leakage near the radiator cap. Our mechanic said to just keep an eye on it. Obviously, having not touched the hoses until today, (ever?) I couldn't tell how precarious the whole thing was. It didn't take much force to break. Later I read that this is pretty common for Miata radiators and that some had failed earlier than this one. This is the same original radiator and it lasted 147K miles. OK, add this to the list of follow-up parts to get. I read that all aluminum radiators can be had. I'm going to look into that option when the time comes. First things first. Have to have a working engine before I shell out for other components.
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| Wow, I can see! |
The rest of the job was pretty uneventful. I can see the new drive belts I replaced when I replaced the dead alternator. I'm done for the day and just pondering what to do next. I know I need to disconnect the fuel lines at some point and will need to relieve the fuel pressure in order to do so. Just a little concerned about doing it my garage with the water heater only a few feet away. Don't want to blow anything up. :)
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| It's new home. The fins look great though. |
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