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Coolant re-routes can be be done two ways. Some people point the thermostat housing toward the intake side, while others point it toward the exhaust side. There are packaging and heat management issues to weigh when deciding which to do (intake side can use a hose, for example, while a metal pipe is needed to deal with the heat on the exhaust side). For us, the right side was obvious, since that's where we were putting our radiator.
At the front of the engine, you have two choices. The seemingly simple option is to replace the original thermostat housing with a block-off plate (we made a crappy, leaky one with coolant temp sensors installed in it and later decided that was stupid).
The far cleaner solution is to unbolt the thermostat neck from the front of the head and put a freeze plug in the hole. As you might guess from our leak, you might want to put a little sealer of some sort on that plug before installing it. Doing this requires no longer feeding coolant to the thermostat and some idle control nonsense we removed long ago anyway. Good riddance!
Our radiator is placed as far as possible from any bedazzled dollar signs to ensure it stays puncture-free. This particular radiator came from a Mazda6 because that's what happened to be laying around. If we built the car today, the radiator would come from a Jeep, an LMP-2 car, or a Protege, because that's what I have laying around today. The point is, any reasonably-sized radiator will work when you're putting it in your passenger's seat.
The nice thing about using an OE radiator, is that they tend to come with nice, reliable OE fans and in this case, even a coolant overflow tank. This was a simple, self-contained solution.
