In the heat of a bitter track battle, keeping your car cool is critical. Reliable coolant temperatures can be the difference between setting a new track record and watching an engine crack under pressure. These high-stakes scenarios are all too familiar for the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis veterans over at KDM Tuners. For over a decade, Josh Sadler and his team have been campaigning vehicles from the Korean conglomerate in racing series across the country, knowing firsthand the importance of maintaining steady coolant temps to stay in the fight.
The 2026 GRIDLIFE season was no different, and the KDM Tuners team turned to Koyorad to handle thermal management on the #66 Hyundai Elantra N. Competing in the Street class of the Track Battle series, driver Will Drees showcased just how capable this platform is—especially with Koyorad’s all-aluminum performance radiator keeping engine temperatures in check. To see how well this unit stood up to a full season of grassroots time attack, we caught up with Josh at KDM Tuners.
Turn 14: What were your first impressions of the Koyorad Performance Radiator?
Josh Sadler: We’ve been building Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis performance cars since 2013, and for a long time, the honest answer on cooling for these platforms was that you were on your own. You either ran the factory unit and managed around it, or you went universal and fabricated. So when a company with Koyo’s history puts out a direct-fit all-aluminum unit for the Elantra N, that gets our attention before we even open the box.
Out of the box, it looks like what you’d hope for. Clean welds, straight end tanks, and brackets that look like someone measured the car rather than guessing at it. We’ve handled enough aluminum radiators to know the difference between one engineered for the application and one that’s just adapted to it, and this is the former. Set the 48mm core next to the factory unit, and the argument makes itself.
T14: How was the Install?
JS: Straightforward, and that’s not nothing. The radiator is a direct fit — factory mounting points, factory hose routing, factory fan shroud. Everything you need to move the shroud over comes in the box.
Most of the labor is getting the front of the car open. Bumper cover, impact bar, core support, hang the condenser forward, and the old unit lifts out with the shroud as an assembly. Reverse it with the Koyo, and you’re done. The only step worth slowing down for is transferring the fan shroud and getting the isolators seated right, because that’s what determines whether the radiator sits square. Nothing about it fought us. Allow a half day, mostly because of the bumper, and burping the system. Do it twice. More cooling complaints come from trapped air than from hardware.
We also shot the whole install, and it’s live on our site as a step-by-step guide, so anyone doing this at home can follow along.
T14: How did it hold up through the season?
JS: A full season of wheel-to-wheel racing, and it’s the radiator in the car right now.
That’s the real test. A radiator that survives a shakedown day doesn’t tell you anything. One that goes through a season of heat cycles, curbing, trailer miles across the country, and the general abuse of a race weekend, and comes out the other side without weeping a seam or cracking a neck — that tells you how it was built. Ours has, and we’d run it again without thinking about it.
T14: How did the radiator perform this season?
JS: Across the 2026 season, we saw coolant temperatures run 25 to 30°F lower on the Koyo than on the factory radiator, and that held everywhere we went — Carolina Motorsports Park, Road Atlanta, Gingerman, Watkins Glen, Laguna Seca.
Those numbers come from our AIM data system, which logs every session we run. We want to be honest about what kind of data that is, because we think readers deserve to know. This was not a controlled back-to-back on a single day with one variable changed. It’s what we observed over a full season of racing across different states, different elevations, different track layouts, and a wide spread of ambient conditions. Anyone who races knows that a July afternoon in Georgia and an October morning in California are not the same cooling problem.
What mattered wasn’t any single peak number; it was where the car lived during a session. On the factory radiator, temps climbed through a run and kept climbing — you’d start a session with the car in a good place and finish it somewhere you didn’t want to be. With the Koyo in, temps come up, settle, and stay settled. The car stops creeping toward the point where it starts protecting itself.
That also means less pressure in the system over a season. We’re not going to put a number on that because we didn’t instrument it as a controlled test, but coolant that isn’t running as hot isn’t pushing the cap as hard, and that load not being there every session is the part you notice in the hoses and the water pump seal a year later.
A look into what can happen when you push beyond the car’s cooling limits on the track. Luckily, in this case, this paddock engine swap wasn’t on the #66 Elantra N, but Josh (right) and the KDM Tuners team came prepared to keep all of their cars competing at GRIDELIFE Road Atlanta this year. Even our Automotive Marketing Manager, Ricky (left), was eager to get his hands dirty, helping to heft this Theta II into the engine bay of the team’s Veloster.
T14: How do you think the Koyorad Radiator affected the overall performance of the Elantra N?
JS: 2026 was our strongest season yet with the #66 Elantra N. Our driver, Willem Drees, finished second in the GRIDLIFE Track Battle Street championship with eleven FWD records to his name, and took top FWD in class for the second year running.
We want to be straight about what a radiator does and doesn’t do here. It didn’t set those times. A driver, a chassis, a tire, and a whole car set those times. What the cooling system does is decide whether you get to use the car for the entire session or only the first half of it, and at a place like Road Atlanta in the summer, that’s the difference between a record attempt and a cooldown lap. You can’t chase a lap time in a car that’s pulling timing to save itself. The Koyo is a big part of why we stopped thinking about that.
Our Laguna Seca record has come down three years running — 1:38.9, then 1:38.6, then 1:37.9 this year. That progression is the whole program getting better. Cooling is one of the things that had to be right for it to keep happening.
CONSTANT COOL
In any form of racing, consistency is the ultimate currency. KDM Tuners proved that when you give a high-output platform like the Elantra N the thermal headroom it demands, record-setting lap times naturally follow. Koyorad’s direct-fit aluminum radiator isn’t just an upgrade; it’s the peace of mind that allows drivers like Will Drees to push past their limits session after session.
To learn more about Koyorad’s complete lineup of direct-fit aluminum radiators, performance oil coolers, and cooling accessories, reach out to your Turn 14 Distribution sales representative today.
We also want to thank Josh Sadler and the KDM Tuners team for putting this radiator through the wringer and sharing their real-world data with us. We look forward to seeing what the team accomplishes during the 2027 GRIDLIFE season! Be sure to visit KDM Tuners if you’re looking to expand the performance potential of your Hyundai, Kia, or Genesis build.
