For $1,500 does this Spoon Sports radiator for the Civic Type R buy peace of mind?

If you own Honda Civic Type R with that K20C1 VTEC Turbo engine, this $1,500 Spoon Sports radiator might be your ticket to some peace of mind.

If you’re thinking of buying a Honda Civic Type R or own one and you’ve done your homework, you already know that proper heat dissipation is kindof an issue. According to Go Tuning US on their Instagram post from earlier today (Aug. 6,2018) it looks like Spoon Sports Japan is finally making their Civic Type R aluminum radiators available to the public for the low low price of $1,500 (insert sarcasm here.)

A post shared by SpoonSportsUSA (@spoonsportsusa) on Aug 6, 2018 at 4:39pm PDT

The stock Honda Civic Type R radiator is 27mm thick and handles cooling duties just fine for normal driving including some spirited driving mixed in. But with some Honda Civic Type R’s showing signs of premature overheating only after a couple of hot laps, Spoon Sports saw this as a chance to improve on a design weakness. While not every Honda Civic Type R didn’t exhibit overheating at the limit, it’s better to be safer than sorry, right?

Enter the Spoon Sports aluminum radiator. This one’s thicker at 36mm but not too thick where air has a hard time passing through it, a design flaw that could be a problem if you make a radiator too thick. In addition, its shape and size make it a direct drop in for the stock radiator so that means you can reuse the fan shroud and condenser.

Presumably, more hot lap testing was done to make sure that the K20C1 VTEC Turbo engine could perform lap after lap with the same power.

The main issue, with all good Spoon Sports products, is that high price. Believe it or not, I can swoop up an aftermarket radiator for the Civic Type R for just $90 on Rock Auto or $160 if I sprung for an OEM one.But then again, those aren’t as thick nor are they track tested.

While you’repaying ten times more than an OEM replacement, your paying for a better quality product than OEM that’ll last you for the life of your car. Spoon Sports has a very close relationship with Honda and rest assured you can count on this radiator being of the utmost quality.