I'm planning on getting rid of all the maze of cooling hoses on the CA18DET and routing the little pipe above the lower rad straight into the back of the block and remove everything else (except for the radiator hoses).

Has anyone else done this - was there any problems?

This also means I'm removing the water cooling for the turbo, and all that water hoses into the throttle body, plenum etc....

This car will never see public road use, will never have a heater and never has to idle in traffic. (just to clarify)

i have basically done this except i still have the turbo cooling and cold start going to the t/b only thing else is the stock oilcooler lines but i suspect you wont be taking them off. i never had any problems, makes it alot less daunting to look at in the engine bay and i can actually see my injectors and fuel rail now !!!!

Cool, the bad thing is I only thought of it now....once the engine was mounted for the third time.

At least I'm getting good at pulling it in and out.

So you also removed the water cooling to the turbo?

I normally remove most of the pipework, but dont remove the water cooling from your turbo, the turbo will tend to run a lot hotter and will kill the bearing quickly.

If you leave any of the small coolent lines, replace them with new ones from Nissan, because they allways blow and are a bitch to replace while the engine is in the car.

I'll leave the water cooling on for the turbo then....I was reading someone else's blog where they removed all the coolant lines, including the turbo cooling as they believed it was unnecessary on a non BB turbo.

Seems to be some debate around the net on that one, but I'd rather run them than not I've decided.

Here's the link I found about removing cooling piping.
http://www.driftopia.com/2007/07/02/ca18det-water-mod-simplifying-water-circulation/