Well, I finally finished fitting the intercooler today. It wasn’t without a few issues and a bit of head scratching.
Highlights:
- Its fitted.
- I bought a Dremel last week with metal and plastic cutting discs. First time I’ve had such a tool and it was a god send. I can’t imagine cutting the diagonal metal bits with a hacksaw. So that’s a win for the Dremel and I have a new found desire to cut stuff just to make sparks!
- Black hoses and black cooler – perfect for the stealth install.
- I’m an expert at bumper removal.
Lowlights:
- I snapped one of the crash bar studs – 17 years of corrosion. Its not really needed.
- Fitting the supplied diagonal brackets was fiddly. Thank god I had the Dremel to cut away large chunks of plastic just to get my fingers in there.
- I had 3 right angle brackets. Two were 5cm by 5cm and one was 5cm by 6cm. Guess which one provided the better fit? Yep, you guessed it, the one that I only had one of. I tried phoning Airtec but couldn’t get through this morning, but I will chase them up on it at some point to find out which was right.
- I think that getting the perfect location of the supplied brackets is a bit of a wild stab in the dark. I lined them up as best I could and drilled holes, cut bars with no issue, but when I went to fit the intercooler I found the slotted holes on the brackets at their absolute limit. No wiggle room at all.
I tried many permutations of bracket orientation (and size!) to find the best fit. I wasted a ton of time. The fitment of the cooler was not quite centred, but I can live with that.
- I then found that the left hand intercooler connection was hard up against the metal work of the car. Now I believe that the supplied spacers that bolt to the crash bar help to bring the intercooler forwards a bit to prevent this. But I think that the welding position of the tabs on the intercooler was too far forward on one side. It made for an awkward fit and the silicone hose was squeezed between the two bits of metal.
Left hand tab and hose (plenty of spacing):
Right hand tab and hose (tab seems welded too far forward and hose connection is hard up to metal work). I had to man handle the intercooler to get the hoses on at this end:
So the airtec is supposed to be a no hassles fit, and it could have easily turned out that way in a parallel universe. I felt like I had a load of alignment issues that dragged the job out quite a bit. I’m used to working with OEM parts that fit millimetre perfect, so my DIY skills were pushed hard with this install.
Anyhow, all is fitted and car drives well
. I’m booked in for Badger5 next month to get the car mapped.