Teach me about intercooler piping.
 

I'm going single and I need a new intercooler setup of some sort. Will I be able to buy a core and make a kit for less? If so, how do you figure out what bends you need before the kit's on the car? Are there different kinds of piping that are better than others. I'm really lost when it comes to this subject, so any help would be appreciated. I've researched, but most of it's on more in-depth topics such as core fins and end tank designs.

I would buy a premade intercooler to save you headaches of customizing something that isn't dyno proven.

but if you do decide to go that route:
-get a really good welding shop, if it leaks, then you're in trouble
-piping should be customized once the intercooler is mounted onto the desired position.
-piping should be beaded (lip on the end of intercooler) so that couplings will not slip off
-piping can be coated with heat resistant paint or any heat deferring material since you want the coldest air possible to go into the intake manifold.

So then this will have to be done once I actually get the turbo kit and everything on there? I plan on taking the car to Rotorsports in Kannapolis, NC. unless something else presents itself, and I wouldn't imagine that they could just mandrel bend some pipes for me on the spot. Wouldn't I be able to take a piping kit made, for say an HKS FMIC, and use it on the core that I buy?

yes you want to have your intercooler bolted up and your turbo before you start your piping.

only if your intercooler is identical to the hks intercooler wich is probably not going to happen, making your own will not be that cheap but you would need about 5-6 3" 16gauge aluminum u-bends and the cheapest place to buy them is www.vrsexhaust.com ($35.00) thats where i buy them my self but they have a lot of scratches or you can get clean ones from www.burnsstainless.com (i think $90.00) make sure you take your time to get everything to fit nice and clean.

By far the easiest way to get pipes fabbed is to have a selection of straights and bends in the sizes you need. Figure out how you'll run the piping, then cut the piece of pipe to weld together to make the pipe. There's no need to find a shop with a mandrel bender - most shops can't afford it, and pipes that are pieced together will work just fine and look good.

FD's are pretty simple for pipe routing, so it's not that tricky. Try fabbing IC piping on an FC sometime :).

Make SURE you get hose beads on the end. Even just a welded bead on the end will do if the shop doesn't have a bead form tool.

But, all that said, it will likely cost you a good amount to have a shop fab up and weld piping for you - I'd say easily $200-300 for materials and labor on the low side. You can get, say, the Greddy front mount kit for like $800 that you can bolt on in your driveway - factor that into the equation. Many times you don't end up saving money.

Dale

What about those universal intercooler piping kits I see on ebay and other places? Would I just have to get one of those and figure out what works best?

Ebay kits are made with really really cheap @$$ aluminium. From a friend who has great experience welding he tried for a long time and each time they would just melt very hard to bead nicely.

If you buy a core your primary concern should not be to have piping that fits but rather you will have to have custom endtanks. Unless you are somewhat experienced in TIG welding and custom fabing I would recommend you just go out and buy one.

Good Luck,

Alex

i always say this for car stuff, YOU ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. its like buying a body kit, if you get the cheap one off of ebay for 200 bucks, when you get it you have to cut sand and modify it to get it to fit, you buy the name brand expensive one, it fits right, no hassles, done right the first time. do yourself a favor, unless you know for sure,,,,,,get the one that fits right and is proven to work. Especially for the FD with the way these things work :dubs:

Steel is better for IC pipes anyway. Alluminum tranfers heat more.

It is a relatively minor consideration, but it has been mentioned several times in this thread without clarity, so I am posting about it. You generally want the pipe between the turbo and the IC to "leak heat". And then the opposite is true for the pipe between the IC and the engine; you want it to avoid absorbing heat.

-Max

I should've been more specific. I'm not actually talking about a core, but a core with end tanks already welded on. Then just get piping with the right bends to go where I need it, but my problem is that I don't know where I need it to go since I can't get the single kit on until I get it to the shop. I've found one IC kit that I liked, but it required removal of the rebar, which I'm not prepared to do since I have the '99 front.

the info i gave you was for a intercooler with endtanks, if you do not want to remove the re-bar get a IC that is like 6" tall 24" wide and 3-1/2" to 4" thick.

I have custom made my intercooler piping. Its not that hard but you'll need patience getting the piping to the correct angles. I have a metal drop saw, band saw, nice sanding setup and a mig setup for aluminum so I would think you'll at least need these tools to complete it. I usually end up taking the piping to a place and have a local race car welder do the tig welding. It doesn't end up costing that much that way since I do most of the work. Like Dale said there are only so many ways to route the tubing and you want the least bends and smallest length of tubing needed to do the job. I have used the 2 3/4 aluminum piping without issue on ebay though. My welder and the the race shops welder had no issues with welding it.

^ lol when i first read "mig setup for aluminum" i was going to say post some pics!, i do the same with aluminum just tack clean and take it friends shop.

Just go around and find a cheap welder, My intercooler and piping cost me $330 total on my single, mine is stock mounted though. Also check out ATPturbo.com for bends

you dont even need a welder just tape your pipes together but leave a section without so you can scribe 2 lines next each other from one side of the pipe to the other and just take the pipes to get welded (NO MUFFLER SHOP).

OK. I just have two questions. Simply put:
1) What size for the pipes?? 2.5"? 2.75"? 3"?
2) Do you even have to weld anything? What are the couplers for? Can't you just put the pipes together with those couplings and clamps?

The factory piping mates up to 2 3/4" tubing. You can use a ton of couplers but you're more likely to have a coupler blow off in the future. Plus anytime you weld a pipe you're more likely to have a nice clean transition and fitment is better.

of course if you change anything later you're stuck with a 200$ piece of pipe art.

I have no intercooler piping on my car at all right now... So will i have to get 2.75" piping? what about 3"piping? Is that too much? will it mess up the engine or anything? or produce less power?
So your method..where you weld it... Do you just get pipes, cut pieces that you need and how much you need and then just weld them together?

with a few right angle bends and some striaght pipe you should be able to cut it into and weld/clamp it into any shape you require

So a couple of 90s and some straights? What about 45's? not needed?
And also about my other question.... What size? 2.75? or shud i just get 3"?

You want to go with the same size piping as the rest of the system, which as previously mentioned is 2.75" stock. You want to do this because otherwise you'll have a lot of step ups and reducers to go from the smaller stock size to the 3" piping. I don't see any advantages to running larger IC piping unless you have a considerable amount of boost being pushed into the engine, Even then if you have couplers going up and down in size throughout the system it would probably hurt performance more than anything. In short get the right size piping that will match up to the factory pipes!

In regard to what bends you'll want, it's always a good idea to have a good selection of a few different degrees. I've never fabbed up a front mount for an FD so I can't tell you which ones are going to be more prevalent than the others, but having fabbed up intercooler piping on other cars I can tell you it's nice to have a good selection to choose from! A cheap alternative me and some friends found to buying a kit of "bends" is actually exhaust kits from a parts store. We got one for an S10 that had a good amount of useful mandrel bends and straights on it for ~$50 and just hacked up what we needed! It's been working very well for a few thousand miles on one friends WRX.

you want to have as few sharp bends or kinks in the i/c piping as they will cause a drop in psi and maybe lag. sometimes sharp bends cant be helped due to space and fitment issues.

Thanks for the help. JHew84. Thanks for replying and everything. but i have one more question... So lets say i get the 2.75" ic piping.... my intercooler has inlets/outlets that are 3"... Should i still have 2.75" piping and just put reducers at the tips of the inlets? And btw its a custom V-mount. Not a fmic.