IM THINKING TO INSTALL AN INTERCOOLER TO MY FD BUT I HAVE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE. HOW HARD IS IT?

 

DON'T TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

Intercooler installation difficulty varies greatly depending on which unit you get. I bought a Blitz stock mount intercooler. It is probably the easiest to mount. It fits in the stock location in just a few hours. The front mount units are much more difficult.

 

Greddy FMIC was a TOTAL pain in the ***. I would not do it ever again.

 

The easiest intercooler to install/uninstall is the Rotary Extreme V-mount...... but that's just the intercooler. The radiator that goes with the kit is a different story.

 

the raidator is only a little harder....drill a hole in each toe hook put the brackets on and extend the wires for the fans. Easy as anything, just takes some time.

 

I was going to have to protest...

Yes the IC is a snap on the RE V-Mount... the Rad will take you the rest of the weekend , not really, but with all the Airbox, Battery, and Cooling relocation it's not for the faint hearted...

 

The blitz is okay to install. Front Mount...

http://www.turborx7.com/blitzfmic.htm

 

For my first shot at messing w/ my FD, installing my PFS SMIC was VERY simple. I don't think it gets easier than that. Of course, I learned a couple things along the way that would have cut the time it took me in half lol...but you live and learn, eh?

 

In my opinion it all comes down to how much you love working on your car, I did a FMIC and the whole thing was measured up and custom made for me ( including piping) the whole excercise took me about 8 weeks, but this was only with a few days a week work and included repositioning the radiator ( dropping it to get the plumbing over the top).
I found it was all in the prep work first that made things easier i.e. battery moved to boot, airpump gone, AST repositioned........ If you plan on spending time going custom make sure you do all the prep work and planning first, if you plan on being a boring bastard like all these other FD owners and just buy all your stuff staright from the shelf you shouldnt have any problems, but the self - reward will be less

 

sorry, no offence to the rest of you

 

The first time I attempted to install my PFS SMIC and intake, it took a couple of hours before I gave up. Turns out the couplers I had were crap and Mazda changed the secondary intake hose for 95 only, so it wouldn't fit with the PFS intake. Now I could remove and re-install the intake and SMIC in about 15 minutes....

 

Offense taken. Self reward is individual. I feel damn good about the work I do to my car regardless of where I bought parts from.

Look into the long term for your intercooler needs. You may find that a SMIC will be all you need and that's easy to install.

Do a search and make sure you are comfortable with any mods the IC requires.

There's enough of us "boring bastards" on here that have done it so there should be plenty of info and pics.

 

I have the Greddy FMIC...the only reason it was difficult was because I was reading **** for directions...Took me all of one day and then part of the next. probably about 8-9 hours total. But now that Iknow how do it I would do agian....it's not bad really..

- remove front bumper and reenforcement (sp)
- remove battery, stock IC, and undertray
- Drain coolant and remove RAD
- remove coolant line and bleed powersteering coolant.
- install the kits coolant line
- Trim front bumper (takes a couple tries to get it "perfect")
- mount fmic (also have to move horn)
- drill holes for radiator tabs
- mount RAD
- remount the AC coolant thingy upright
- Figure out which way to install FMIC pipes
- refill RAD
- Remount bumper
- Trim undertray to accomodate all the **** you moved around.
- Relocate or miniturize battery.

Tripple check everything, fire her up and go for a spin

This is what I remember...

Offense taken here too...I also spend a **** load of time and work hard doing whatever I do to my car....Wheterh shelf bought or fabbed.

I prefer shelf bought because all the trial and error has been done....I have a frined (no names mentioned) that fabs his own stuff....I take my hat off to him but when I look into his engine bay....I see home made fabricated stuff...Personally I think it looks like **** BUT it works...it's not nice, neat, show quality **** like you can do with shelf bought parts. Some people do nice work though...BUT that's about 1% of the people who actually fab their own stuff.

 

Actually, there is quite a bit of testing and design that goes into an "IC kit". Simply getting a core, slapping some endtanks on it and getting piping isn't the same thing. While you may end up with an IC, the efficiency will not be the same without proper testing of the design.

This is why you purchase the kits that are already complete, not to make it "easier".

Search for posts by "Kevin T. Wyum". He designed the ASP/M2 IC's. You'll see that there was quite a bit of engineering done for those.

 

No sense in reinventing the wheel. If somebody makes a product with the quality and performance I require there is no need for me to spend my time and effort fabbing my own custom part just so I can call it "mine". In the majority of cases it is certainly not any cheaper to build anything from scratch yourself.

 

The PFS stock mount takes an hour, at most two, even if you never did it before.

 

Yea...true, but had I known exactly what I was doing, and the correct order to do it in, id say I coulda managed 30 min flat. While that can't measure up to Rynberg haha...it's a big improvement over and hour or 2.

 

 

LOL!!