I've been looking over the cooling system on the SRT6 for a while. And one of the biggest problems I see with it is there is just no cooling for the S/C heat exchanger except for when the car is moving at a pretty good speed down the road. Think about it, can you think of any case of liquid running thru some tye of radiator that isn't cooled by a fan. You may think that when the cooling fan for the radiator comes on that it is cooling the heat exchanger too. But nobody is going to convence me that it is, there is 1&1/8 inches of space between the HE and the AC condencer, I'm guessing it's designed this way so the condencer does not block free flowing air thur the HE. With that distance between the HE & the condencer on all three sides the radiator fan is just not going to pull any air thru the HE with all the other free air to pull above it. So I have decided to move the HE forward 1&1/4" to make room for two 6.5" 330 cfm cooling fans. To do this I removed the whole front bumper cover to see what I needed to do. The HE has a rectangluar type of funnel that attaches to it and the front of it, it just slides into the back of the bumper cover. That makes it pretty easy to move the HE foward, all I had to do was trim 1&1/4" off the front & sides of it. Then made some little brackets to move the HE forward, nobodies going to see them so they didn't have to be pretty. I did have to do a little trimming on some metal where the front bumper mounts and used a little touch up paint on what I trimmed. I'm also installing a nice digital Cyberdyne temperture gauge for the HE, there was a 1/8" NPT (plugged) hole on the drivers side for a probe. The fans will be operated by remote control with a key fob like I done my TC & ESP/BAS. I just got all the parts ordered today, it hit me for a little over $300, but I believe this will work great. In HPPD's case he's always got plenty of air running on a race track but I believe this will work great for a street car.

 

I forgot to say I have 2&1/2" of room for the fans now and a few more pic's, I didn't know how many pic's I could put in one post. After posting these the wife wants the computer, so I may not be back on the board tonight.

 

Great Idea!

 

Thanks, I thought it was a good idea. And by adding the gauge to you'll be able to tell what your temps are with and without fans. I thought over the idea of getting a larger HE for more volume, but in my opinion you'll just have more volume of coolant at the same temps. This is were I got the fans:
http://www.the-fan-man.com/shop/size...441d3e146fe5b4
This is were I got the Gauge, mount and sender unit, the sender had to be special ordered for a two wire application:
http://www.jegs.com/webapp/wcs/store...0002_358763_-1
http://www.jegs.com/webapp/wcs/store...0002_372403_-1
http://www.jegs.com/webapp/wcs/store...10002_45924_-1
And this is were I got the remote relay and fuse holders for conrtolling the fans:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bi...C_15_AMP_.html

 

I'm making a little progress on this project with what parts I've recieved. One of the pic's is of the lower dash dropped down to mount the gauge pod and find the curcuits I need for the gauge when I recieve it, I used the only exsisting hole in the Knee bolster to mount the pod directly under the key switch. I had to use a 3" long #12 machine screw to reach all the way thru the padded part of the dash, I had a pic, but it was real blurry. Another pic is of were I located the remote control relay & fuse holder inside the ECU box, you can see the top of the relay on the left side of the wiring harness and the fuse holder on the right. Then another pic of a red LED with the key fob that operates the remote relay for the fans, the red LED was being used to check the circuit. I'm going to mount a red or green LED on the top of the gauge pod so I will know when the fans are on, the wiring for it is complete and ready to go thru the firewall. And the last pic is of the ECU box & small power box where I got the 12 volts for the relay, all the wiring was ran thru the boots of the OEM wiring and the only thing that looks out of place is the red wire. Still waiting on the heat gauge & fans, I've got the sending unit for the gauge, but I don't want to install it until I get the fans mounted for fear of damaging it.

 

Making progress, fans are in and running and temp sending unit mounted. I really think this is going to get the inner cooler temps down .

 

Nice job Steve... I think you got something there...

 

All I can say is wow I am sure glad I found this tread. Only thing I would suggest would be maybe throw in an LET HE while you have it all apart and a CM30 pump but wow looks good.

 

Thanks HDDP !
The bigger heat exchanger was a thought, but if it was thicker I would not have had room for the fans. The fans need to have room to disperse the air and I don't think I could have moved the HE out any more than I did. The Johnson pump was a thought too, but my car has less then 3K on it so I just couldn't see replacing it till it goes out. This mod will not help at highway speeds, but I think it will greatly improve the performance at lower speeds when there is no air flowing thru the heat exchanger or say at the track sitting around at idol or creeping along speeds.

 

I finally recieved the temp gauge and got it installed yesterday, so I've about got this project complete except for putting the front end back on the car. It was only 24 degree's outside so I went ahead and fired it up in the garage where it was 60 degree's to bring the car up to operating temp's to check the gauge. After the car warmed up I kept shutting it off and starting it to try to get the heat exchanger temp's up, after about 20 minutes I was only able to get the HE tempeture up to 110 degree's. After getting it up to 110 I turned the fans on to see how well the fans worked, I timed it and it took 2 minutes to go from 110 to 96. I could not tell if the I/C pump was running or not, so I don't how accurate this test was. Here's a few pic's of the gauge, it matches the silver console quite well.

 

Great show & tell thread Steve... Even if it's an experiment, the terrific part is that you had the intelligence and motivation to do it... And share the process with the forum...

I'm sure that your concept will help the performance of the car...

 

Thanks HDDP. I have a question that you would probably know. What tells the I/C pump to come on, tempeture or does it run when the car is running? I could not tell if the pump was running or not yesterday. And another question I had too, I was wanting to make sure the sending unit was not leaking before I put the front bumper cover back on. Since both cooling systems share the overflow resevior, shouldn't the pressure be the same in both systems even if the S/C system is not up to a higher operating temp?

 

Steve, I'm just heading to daytona speedway for the rolex 24 hour grand prix and will be in the car for the next hour... Give me a call and I can discuss whatever information I have... 310.291.1372

 

Hey Steve, any updates on how you mod is working for you?

 

Not really, she's sitting in the garage with a cover on her for the winter. There is one thing that I may still have to do, I thought that the I/C pump was turned on by tempeture, but HDDP said he thought the I/C pump came on only when the S/C was running. So I might have to do a little more wiring to get the pump to come on when the fans are running so the coolant is circulating even when the S/C's not running if HDDP is right.

 

The imagination and ingenuity on this forum never ceases to amaze me.
It's too bad some of you guys weren't working on "Team Crossfire" at Chrysler, 5 or 6 years ago. (That is, if such a group ever existed in the first place.)

 

Steve,
Is the front (steel) bumper bolted to or welded to the ends of the frame?

Thanks,
KrzyFast

 

There is really no steel in the front bumper cover. There are two studs in the front, one one ach side of the heat exchanger, here's a pic of where they go thru :


Then there is a stud and a bolt on each side that holds the sides of the bumper cover to the bottom of the front fenders. They are a PITA to get to, you have to take the fenderwell loose from it too. Getting to the two side bolts you have to work thru the side marker light hole and the fenderwell. This pic is the steel front bumper.

 

Any updates?