Front mount Intercooler HELP!!!
 

Hey all I have a very nice 85 gs project car that I am currently working on. The car has a second gen s5 motor with a ported stock turbo. Anyway I have been looking around a little bit and I am just trying to figure out where exactly I am going to put my intercooler. I picked up my buddies core really cheap and I had a ton of piping laying around as well. I am currently running the stock radiator. I was just wondering if you guys can post up some pictures of your placement so I can get an idea of placement/mounts. Thanks for the help guys!!

Probaly going to need to relocate your battery. I personaly would lay it down with the angle of the front bumper. Not sure how possible it is but looks doable.

Most commonly placed right in front of the radiator. Battery relocation is necessary, 1 in 1 out to the driver's side. I will be running one soon, I'll post pics :biggrin:

I forgot to mention I actually just relocated my battery to the driver side bin! So i have plenty of room in the front!

Good move. I used the Isuzu NPR small size intercooler. I was able to use 2 stock bolts and then zip ties around the bottom. I could lift up the front of the car by grabbing the intercooler.

It sits right over the round cross-bar in front of the radiator. Entry and exit angle was perfect.

I have some pics at home, will try to post them up tonight.

Awesome! I am super excited to see. It has been like 15 degrees out side so I am going to gather up some more information and hopefully next week il be able to start fabricating everything up!

Exactly what I'm doing. It's like -11^F and I don't even want to walk from the car to the house.

Sitting and researching has its perks though, I've learned mountains of information the last few weeks from the forum :)

The way you mount the intercooler depends on the intercooler you go with. Since mine had horizontal outlets on each end, I opted to mount it at an angle so I could route hoses through the stock radiator brackets. I also wanted to leave plenty of airspace between the radiator and the FC oil cooler mounted below. That thing gets hot! The battery and coolant reservoir need to be relocated with just about any FMIC setup.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1358906877

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1358906877

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1358906877

I went the simple route and just bent some bars of aluminum to make the brackets. About 10 bucks in materials + the cost of the intercooler and no welding required.

So your oil cooler is only a few inches below level with the radiator?? Interesting....

if u want better pictures let me know

Sent from my iPhone using RX7Club

It's about level with the bottom of the radiator. I just made brackets to adapt it to the stock oil cooler brackets.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1358908439

^Awesome, thank you :biggrin:

The pictures are helping me out a lot! Thank you so much keep then coming guys!!

I just welded a bar across the radiator supports and mounted the intercooler to that.

Attachment 684795

Obviously had to relocate the battery to make room for the intake pipe. I put mine behind the passenger seat inside the bin.

Did you stick with the stock transmission or shoe horn the s5 transmission in?

I currently have to stock transmission in the car but I definitely want to upgrade to an s5 turbo trans soon!

You can go this way like me..
https://www.rx7club.com/attachments/...gs-photo-5-jpg

More here
https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...hings-1022443/

Il try to post up a couple of picture of my current engine bay setup tomorrow! My current intercooler has vertical outlets from the top corners!

I You couldn't run the intercooler the way seanrot did, as his is a 12a, because the turbo (passenger) side of the intercooler has to run to the front of the car and back up the intake (driver) side of the engine bay so you'll have to keep that in mind.

Although as I've already stated on his thread, seanrot's engine bay and intercooler setup makes tons of sense and is awesome in my opinion :nod:

When you say "vertical outlets from the top corners" do you mean that you have both outlets that look like seanrots' driver's side outlet but yours points straght up?? If so that could complicate the routing of the pipe even more..

Sorry for being un-clear my intercooler is a standard setup. Just like LizardFC! Il post a couple pictures today!

So i totally forgot to check my photos last night - was busy installing new goodies :egrin:

However I did manage to find this engine bay shot from post-ducting. Here you can see the exit point for the Small NPR. Entry is exactly the same on passenger side.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1358976260

Again - i'll try to post some pics of the setup without the radiator shroud top on there so you can see the mount points.

~Geoff

Geoff, how do u like the small NPR intercooler? How much power? Was thinking of getting one for my REW swap but I don't think it will be sufficient enough as its quite thin. Just wanted to get your input, thanks.

Cartech turbo here.

Intercooler went in front of the radiator.

Some "aftermarket modifications" were in order.
IE, lots of metal shavings from die grinder and "C" shaped debris from cutting tool were required to get the piping through to the front of the car.

OK so I scoured through my photos for quite some time - I think in my mind's eye I was thinking of a shot of the oil cooler I had - I couldn't for the life of me find the pics of the IC installed! Not sure where they went - i know i took some. Anyways.


The NPR was good (This is Code Blue's car now) - at the time of the build I had about 180whp (Dynoe'd) but was running way rich (blowthrough turbo). Keep in mind also this was on an S4 block and turbo (ported wastegate) with a small 45 dco weber carb. I'm pretty sure it's good for 220whp now that it's tuned in though I haven't seen a recent dyno for it.

In terms of cooling - very effective. On a summer evening driving at freeway speeds I would have issues with frosting on the upper intake. Granted this is largely because of the carb in addition to having the turbo very well insulated.


I do recall that I had to completely cut through the top of the radiator support on the passenger side, and quite probably on the driver's side as well, for the ducting to fit. Very tight fit. Basically just took the tin snips to it until it fit.

If you're going for a tuned (non stock) REW swap I'd be looking at something bigger. I dont know for fact, but I would guess that the NPR would be good for 250-260whp range. I wouldn't feel comfortable going much further beyond that with it.