bkubisht

Got a radiator for this '86 N/A, it was far overdue, running very hot at high speeds, overheated once. It's an all-aluminum 3-core deal, very nice unit. It's this one:
3 Row 1984 1989 Nissan 300zx V6 All Aluminum Radiator 88 87 86 85 | eBay

BUT I can't quite get the shroud back into place. The fan swings within a 1/4" of it. I can put new holes in the mounting ears to bring it up away from the fan enough for comfort. But the shroud, especially the rearward one (closest to the engine) isn't going to fit at all. Anyone deal with this elegantly? I probably can't return the radiator, because I had already filled the whole system with coolant to check for leaks before discovering this fitment issue.

Non-elegant options appear to be A) Leave the rear half of the shroud out. B) Cut the bottom edge of the shroud off.

Do the turbo Z31s have a thicker radiator with different shroud which would accommodate this?

Thanks in advance... I've already fixed about 30 things on this car thanks to these online resources.

ken99

Turbo cars used an electric cooling fan set up that would likely accommodate a thicker radiator with little or modification.

zxguy1986

Interesting post. If you looked into why you overheated at high speed, what did you find? My 86na has overheated only once - and it was at interstate speed on a very hot day with the AC running full. Made no sense and I never figured out why. Still a mystery. Otherwise, never.

Other experience: I had to run without a fan shroud for a month after a mech reinstalled the shroud wrong and it let go in traffic, was chopped up by the fan. What a racket! I thought the motor exploded. Had to pull over and hack the remaining fragments with a hammer to get them out of the fan path.

Took me a month to find a replacement. Car ran great, as usual, for the month without a shroud. So, if you are getting even more cooling from your new radiator, you may be OK if you chop your shroud in some places - or maybe leave it off altogether. Why not try it for a while at high speed with no shroud? If the cooling works right, who cares?

Just remember - and also to warn others! - that fingers get lost easy under your hood!

bkubisht

Thanks guys, this car is still apart. Hopefully this week I'll end up with a turbo shroud setup depending on what's in the local yards and if the tape measure says they are different. Or a thinner radiator. Converting to electric fan was considered too, but the mechanical one is working fine and I'd like to just keep it going stock instead of adding complexity.


I looked into why it overheated, and the radiator is all that's left. A month ago I changed the CHTS, and found that it still had the original timing belt. The car has 145k miles. So I did the water pump and 170 thermostat at the same time. Still overheated. So checked that the fan was pulling plenty of air, could see the fins deflect when racing the engine. Did a compression check, didn't seem to be blown head gasket. That's why I'm throwing a radiator at it. Once apart I saw the old one had been resoldered / repaired anyway.

rogerz

when I got my 86T the PO left the shroud in the rear of the car with some other stuff.
No heat problem while running at more than 20 mph. a car at speed pushes more air thru the rad than any fan can handle. the problem with no shroud shows up if you idle for some time at a light or wherever. I could sit in a parking lot and watch the temp gage go up. once shroud was on no more problem sitting and idling. how did you install the rad? did you pull the bumper cover and slide the rad into its housing?

DeepFriedRice

Just to share my installation experience, I put a 3-row radiator in my 87 turbo, run electric fans, so no shroud. it slid right in with the bumper off, but i did have to trim out the center of the metal cross piece (where the secondary hood latch grabs) to get things back together.