I figured people would like to see how I did the job in my CA18DET S13 Silvia.. so here 'tis.

This is the new garrett cooler I got.. I picked it up second hand (although unused) at a good price, and had to make do with the two pipes coming up the top.. alot of people go for coolers with the pipes poking out either side midway, and go up around under the headlights.. I personally never liked this idea anyway, and requires alot of stuffing around.. mind you, this required a fair bit of stuffing around too.

Firstly I had to get the front bar off and try and work out what I had to do.. There was 4 nuts up the inside left and right of the front bar.. and then there's 2 main support bar bolts on the left and right which you can see poking up from the bumper below.

Here's a close up shot.. those sound horns had to be relocated later.



After having a bit of a fiddle around, trying to see how I could get this cooler to fit, I found that the only way I could do it, was to modify a pair of the support bars a little bit. The picture below points them out.. the middle one that holds the bonnet clip had to be removed, and swapped with a similar type bar to what you'll find underneath your stock intercooler.. its a thin bar just holding the body from flexing, I had a spare one so I was lucky there.

And here are the left and right bar's removed.

This is what I had to do to them, to get the cooler to fit in.. ALOT of people that I know have done seriously bodgy jobs with this sort of thing, such as removing bars completely, cutting them in half so they only half support what they used to, and similar.. I tried to hold onto the integrity of what the bars were doing, by trimming them... first shot is them with the sound horns still attached, and the next is a comparison of how much I had to trim off. (note: this shot was taken before I cleaned up the trimming job of the support bar, it looks like a serrated edged knife below!)
     

I also had to relocate the thermistor type thing that was sitting up near the aircon tank on one of these bars, and bolted it to the top of the boot lid support bracket as shown below.


Now to push the intercooler up into position, and see how it fits! It fitted quite nicely, and I found some suitable brackets to hold it in place left and right.. as it turns out, only a very small section of the front bar itself needed to be cut (very small, almost didn't need to do it, unlike most people!).. and with the front bar on, the intercooler was held in place very snugly..


And here it is with the front bar on! I didn't  have to cut out any part of the bottom of the front bar at all.. just a little bit on the side/inside of the bumper around the left hand sid eof the intercooler... it turned out well.. and the intercoolers visibility is reasonably stealth.. I'm not a "hey look at me" type man, so I like it.


The next steps were to work out how to get the bugger to pipe up.. there is just enough room behind the headlights, thankfully!.. I had originally thought about locating this intercooler upside down and do the piping like alot of others have, underneath the headlights.. but found that the clearance between the intercooler pipes and the ground wasn't to my liking.. (I know someone with very little intercooler pipe/ground clearance, and has ripped them off on the highway)... I ran into a hitch, the charcoal canister shown below, was in the bloody way! The idea was to get the piping to follow the green line, the blue circle is just pointing out what was in the way.

Fortunately, there's just 4 pipes going to the thing, and with a bit of thinking and planning, I worked out that I could lead the two pipes that feed into the top of the canister canister come from the other side of the engine, and led them around the back.. then the charcoal discharge and the fuel tank pressure type line, I fed them (with the help of purchasing some longer piping and replacing it) backwards towards the firewall.. Then I mounted the charcoal canister's mounting bracket up against the back of the engine bar, and reconnected everything up.. as shown below!


The next thing was to get the piping done up, and book the car in somewhere to get the job done.. I got it all done at Rob Bliss Exhausts at Geebung, Brisbane QLD... I booked it in for 3 o'clock in the afternoon, with the plans to cut a pair of holes to feed the piping through behind the headlights.. I ended up cutting the holes with the help of a large drill bit and a metal blade on a jigsaw.. in order to get close enough to use the jigsaw, I had the headlights etc removed. (My mate and I originally tried to start the job with an angle grinder, and then found the jigsaw did the job a helluva lot easier and tidier... below is some shots of the piping work done.. total cost of the piping was $185.. there are some places that would try and charge ridiculous amounts of money for intercooler piping.. don't let them, and go elsewhere.

This first shot, I've highlighted the 3" cold air intake I've done to my airbox.. just so some of you who think "what the hell", know what's going on there.. just ignore that for the time being.. and see the nice line of black piping from the turbo. (I have a plumb back BOV mounted back there, so that would look quite a bit different to stock.. The area across the intercooler looks quite bare without the piping going across..

I did move the battery back a little bit, but it wasn't really necessary.. (Some people I know have had to get quarter(?) size batteries in order to allow the placement of intercooler piping to come up under the headlight and past the battery.. sheesh!).


Overall, a rather clean and nice job all round I think.. I'm quite happy with it... after driving the car hard, the intercooler remains cold (unlike the stock intercooler), and the air and piping on the out-take of the intercooler stays nice and cold.. meanwhile the piping on the other side of the intercooler is too hot to touch for more than a second or two. 


Leaving the exhaust shop, I immediately noticed on my boost gauge (while running stock boost), that the boost went up about 2-3 psi, holding around 10 psi.. the reasoning for this is most likely attributed to the fact that this cooler has a very small pressure drop while feeding air through it.. unlike the restrictive stock intercooler... As for performance, the first thing I noticed, and continue to be incredibly happy with, is that my car continues to pull and pull until redline.. it used to be a pull at around 3,500 to 5,000 revs, and then it would loose the obvious pulling feeling.. Next thing to do was wind the boost up etc, and I believe this has been very worthwhile..

PIPEWORK UPDATED, CLICK HERE

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