Ok so I have taken some pictures to entertain you all on a Friday night!
The rad has 2 bunged off pipes at the bottom so I am assuming this is for an auto and not a manual like mine?
The first one here shows the width of the current installed rad. The top tank is approx 4.5cm.
The actual coil/fin width though is actually a lot thinner as demonstrated here.
These are only pics of the internal recess. There is in fact a further recess at the front although maybe not quite as much. I would say that the coils and fins are perhaps 3cm wide max.
Here you can see the amount that the fan blades stick out of the back of the housing.
The front of the fan blades are approx an inch and three quarters to the fins on the rear section of the rad.
I reckon that there is plenty of scope to increase the width of the current radiator which should give a significant amount of extra cooling to the system.
I used a couple of nuts as spacers and took a photo to demonstrate.
This increases the top tank measurement I could have by approx 30%
There is still plenty of room between the rear of the rad and the fan blades, nothing is snagged after the housing is moved further towards the block and the fan blades now sit further in the housing.
To be honest there is probably enough room between rad fins and fan blades and back of plastic housing to belts/pulleys etc for the fan to sit completely inside the fan housing.
My question is this! Is my rad the wrong one and too small? Should a genuine rad have a wider top tank and have deeper coil and fins that the approx 3cm I currently have? If it is the correct one, am what I am thinking an upgradeable possibility?
I think if I had a rad 30% wider where the cooling coil and fins filled the bracket better and the fan itself was further in to the housing this should all equate to significantly better cooling right?