Radiator Mounting and Cap
 

I was wondering if anyone could explain what i'm seeing in the engine bay.

The radiator cap on the left side of the image looks like it's not actually connected to the radiator. Instead it's built on to a piece of hard piping connected on both sides with soft piping. One side heads off to the engine and the other im guessing goes down to the radiator?

I can't say i've seen the engines in many newer cars, but having the radiator cap not actually on the radiator is a first. Although it helps move the radiator out of the bay, seems like it will be a pain to replace the radiator... which I had to do to my car recently.

Cropped image attached. Full size here:
http://www.scion.com/images/cars/frs..._engineBay.jpg

Its a remote radiator filler cap. The radiator is tucked away in the engine bay and otherwise inaccessible if the rad cap were mounted directly to it. Ive seen it tons of modded cars, but I cant say Ive seen on a production car.

To swap the radiator, from the limited time Ive had in the engine bay and looking at pics, its probably easiest to remove the bumper to R&R the radiator - which shouldnt be incredibly difficult.

Ok, so I guess it's more annoying than normal, but necessary for styling and fitting everything in. Is this fairly normal now?

There are a lot of other cars like BMW and Nissan, they have identical radiators and remote caps so I think this is the new design trend. I have replaced radiators on them and they are not too hard to do so don't worry !

they started putting radiators where they need to be and not where the drivers would like them to be.. all they had to do was move the filler cap.. brilliant!

The radiator cap just needs to be at the highest point of the cooling system so you can burp air out easier.

Turbo Subarus have a secondary coolant tank on top of the engine so that after shutdown, coolant will continue to flow through the turbo (which is why turbo timers on Subarus are mostly a waste of money). But the early WRX didn't have a cap on the radiator, only on the secondary tank. Newer ones have two caps because it was cheaper to just produce one radiator for both turbo and non-non turbo engines.

plus the radiator is tilted some degrees (not sure which way, towards or away from engine) so even if it was visible it may still be difficult to access it.

It's on a number of production cars too. I've worked on a number of GMs (especially northstar caddys) with the same setup, except that they just put the cap on the resevior instead, but it's the same concept.