If you have ever dropped the engine out the bottom of a 944, you know how hard it is to get the car up high enough to slide the engine out under the radiator support. When I was taking the engine out of the car at the start of this rebuild/replacement process, I started looking at the radiator support. It is bolted in with four bolts. The funny thing is that even if you remove the four bolts, you can not remove the support, you can just move it around a little. It is held in it's location by some tabs on the side mounts that hold the ends of the support in a channel on each side mount. I decided to cut off one of these tabs so I could easily remove the support.
Once I removed it, I could slide the engine out with the car about a foot lower than before. It made things much easier. It slid out right between the radiator side mounts.
I just found that it has additional benefits.
A long time ago, I bought a thicker all aluminum radiator for my old 86 951 that was totaled in 2011.(I told you it was a long time ago). I did not install it because it was too thick to go in with the radiator support in place and the power steering pulley in place.
I finally got around to installing it with this replacement engine.
I've had to install and remove the fan and several hoses a few times to get them all to fit with the thicker radiator. I've had to trim several of the hoses. I am using the blue silicone 944 turbo hose kit from Lindsey. I've had to modify a few things and use the crossover coolant pipe from my old turbo to get it to work. After several days of installs, removals, trims, re-installs, rinse and repeats, etc, etc. I finally got it all done last night and added distilled water to do the first coolant flush of the replacement engine.
I finished pouring in the second gallon when...
Drip...
Drip...
Drip...
GREAT!!!!!!!(that may not be the actual word I used at the time)
All my hose connections are tight with no leaks.
The radiator has a couple tiny leaks at the rear facing weld on the passenger side.
Now I get to tear it all back apart, get the radiator fixed and put it all back together.
Sometimes I just want to buy a new toyota and never work on another car again.
On the bright side, with my support mod, I can drop the radiator straight down to get it out of the car. Here is a picture of the passenger side without the mod and the drivers side with the mod.
My car spent part of it's life in Ohio so the underside has some rust and general nastiness. The radiator support was a bit rusted and generally nasty, so I cleaned it up and painted it. I don't have any Alpine White on hand so it now matches a bunch of the other newly refinished parts.