Now for the intercooler... I wanted to go with something that would allow a much more compact intake system, allow me to get rid of the big air tubes running up to the front of the car, and reinstall the front bumper support. This basically ruled out most air-to-air intercoolers besides a compact V-mount setup, but that would require another fan or two & ducting the hood and a different radiator (or at least different radiator outlet plumbing and angles), both which I also didn't want to do. So, water-to-air intercooler it was.
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Login offers some kits, and dimensions for all the ICs and heat exchangers that they have, which made the selection much nicer. Essentially, I wanted something to sit in the same spot as the OEM TMIC and allow the hood to close with minimal modification, which really cut the options down to just the You are not allowed to view links.
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Login (3.5" thick core), which has offset air inlet & outlets. This IC was only spec'ed for about 350 hp on the website, which should be OK for my plans with this car (about 350-400 hp max, I think I'm around 300 now)
By using reducing couplers on the inlet and outlet, 2" tubing straight off the BOV tube, and 2.25" tubing and 135 degree coupler cut down a bit, it was possible to piece together a fairly smooth and much lower volume air path to get to the original throttle body elbow. All I need on this side are a few pieces of bent aluminum bar-stock to hold the IC in place and mount to the engine & UIM.
Moving on to the heat exchanger, this would need to fit in the front of the car, before the radiator and oil cooler so that it will get the coolest air. The AC condenser has been removed from the car many years ago, so I don't need to worry about competing with that either. FrozenBoost had options that were more square, similar to a typical radiator, or much more rectangular like our oil coolers. I wanted to do minimal cutting of the radiator support (none if possible), and absolutely no structural cutting to get it to fit, and I wanted to use this heat exchanger basically as a large capacity tank to prevent water temps from changing too quickly, and to provide a constant head of water to the pump, which should ideally have its inlet lower than the heat exchanger outlet. This way I could avoid having to get another tank, as I don't intend on using it to dump ice into. Basically, these set of criteria meant that I was looking at something similar to the oil cooler, sitting above it (and above the round tube that braces the front chassis legs in front of the radiator). The two options were the You are not allowed to view links.
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Login with a 3.5" thick core and the You are not allowed to view links.
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Login with a 2" core. Since I anticipate being marginal on the intercooler capacity, and don't mind the additional water capacity in the heat exchanger to avoid a tank, the thicker Type 101 looked ideal. 26" wide would be very tight between the sides of the radiator support, especially with fittings, but essentially it looked like the only option.
I ordered the 600 hp kit, with the specific IC and heat exchanger (the 350 hp kit didn't offer the bigger heat exchanger), and omitted the fan for the heat exchanger since I should be able to trigger & use the radiator fan with proper ducting. I also got a variety of tubing bends and couplers to piece together the rest of the intake system. Everything arrived in late November, and I've been slowly working on fitting things since then. Between Christmas & New Years, I got a bit of time where I could use the angle grinder & not wake anyone up... no going back now!
Basically, most of the structure for the battery vent on the drivers side needed to be cut out to make room for the fittings, and the bungs for the fittings themselves got cut down and re-tapped so that the fittings won't protrude as far.
The final cut looks like this, from the front first, then from the engine bay:
And with the heat exchanger test-fit:
This arrangement will have a 90 deg elbow in the bottom bung pointing forward as the outlet, straight into the pump mounted next to the driver's side headlight, and a 90 deg elbow in the top bung pointing backwards into the engine bay to connect up directly to the intercooler outlet. There is also room to run the pump outlet hose back through the same hole to go back towards the engine. I'll need to make some block-off panels to close up the rest of the hole and help keep the cold air up in the front of the car, as well as the brackets for holding things in place, but conceptually most of the work for the components and routing is done.
The electrical and switching side of things is still a bit unknown. I've got bits and pieces done, and tentative wiring diagrams drawn up, but I want to do some testing and playing around with an arduino first before writing things up.