Bryan at Fab9 has earned my business, 3 days to ship it all the way to Utah and great prices to boot. Gotta say thanks for PM'ing with me several times to make sure we were both on the same page with everything. Great communication.

The intercooler looks even better in person. The analog gauges are perfect too. Excited to wire it all up. I think I'm going to scavenge some connectors off the 90' wiring harness and use them so I can quick disconnect the gauges if needed.

I'll get some better non-phone photos when I get back down to St. George tomorrow.

 

Am I the only one here who finds it mildly disturbing that more than half of your posts are propped?

 

[pedantry]

Almost certainly not true. Comparing his props to his post count only gives you a ratio; it doesn't tell you how many of those posts are propped, because the best posts will have more than one prop each. Granted, a higher than 1:2 prop:post ratio is impressive, but that's not the same as having more than half of your posts propped.

[/pedantry]

 

^this.

And just wait til' he gets it on the road. I predict a higher than 1:1 prop-to-post ratio.

Props might not really mean anything in most cases, but I think his P2P ratio illustrates how ridiculously awesome this is.

 

I just view the props as encouragement that I am doing a good job. Which helps me. Sometimes I don't think my work is that good so it helps getting a little bit of a boost to keep going at the pace I do.

As Mark said, I didn't even get a single props until about 9-10 pages in.

Oh well, props are just a "fun thing" in my head. I just hope that people don't think because I have a lot of props, that I actually know very much. That is just not true!

 

*Considers propping this ^^ post for the lulz*

 

Since I wish I could prop some of your posts more than once I will often hit the prop button on a "regular" post to make up for it

Anyway... In for vroom!

 

Double post!

 

Little done last night

Decided I wanted to give myself another inch of room at the bottom of the radiator. So I moved the radiator bracket off the stock lower bracket and moved it forward a couple inches. Drilled and tapped a M8x1.25 hole, put 2 washers between the brackets so the radiator would clear the captive nut on the bracket, and slotted the bolt in. super easy and gives you a ton more space.

Yes I am going to touch up the bracket paint a little.





Also mounted up the new intercooler from Fab9. Talk about easy peasy. Took me longer to find the other grade 10 bolt for the drivers side then it did to install it. Absolutely perfect fit. No jiggling it or torquing it in a certain direction, just pops right on. Gotta hand it to Bryan at Fab9, he makes a quality product, the whole fit and finish/welds are perfect and the packaging was great too. Small box that fits the intercooler perfectly, with lots of padding to ensure the mailman who likes to throw things onto my bakery floor in a rush can't break it.

Correct me if I am wrong, just want to double check; but the AIT sensor bung for the boost gauge goes right before the cold side on the intercooler correct?







Thanks for the recommendation to purchase this guys. Way happier with this than I was with that old FM piece of crap lead weight.

 

Also what is everyones opinion of clocking the turbo down more? Not sure what I was thinking when I decided to clock the turbo like this; probably thought, "well that is how the original owner had it, better not screw with it!"

The intercooler piping clears the coolant lines, but only by about 1/8". If I clock it down another 2-3" it would make it much easier to make a custom pipe at an exhaust shop(if I can make myself make accurate enough measurements that is).

I also want to turn the coolant bracket for the coolant return/feed lines counter-clockwise 90 degrees to make it a little more "cleaner". Or at least make a new bracket that is longer so the lines aren't as high by the V.C.. They are stretched pretty taught as is right now. You can see I had to bend it down a little since I was worried.

 

Clock it downward - then use a 90 degree long leg elbow from Vibrant. Should get you off to an easy start when fabricating the pipes and it will give you just enough flex to not require a hump hose coupler.

 

This is how I am with Jeff's posts.

 

Huh?

AIT measures the temperature of the air going into the engine so that the MS can calculate the mass of the air for proper fueling. So, you need to make sure the air temperature is measured on the cold side. Recommendation is cold side of intercooler to avoid heat soak. Was that your question?

As for boost gauge and also the boost/vacuum source for the MS, you should go to the intake manifold post-throttle for that. That's the other half of the air mass measurement.

 

Woops sorry, a bung was included with the AEM boost gauge that looked exactly like the the AIT bung in the intercooler, so my sleep deprived brain confused the two. Thanks!

 

Man, that IC does look good.

such fitment. much temptation. wow.

 

So good it makes you go shiba EO2k!

Also mounted the gauges up. Yup, happy as a clam with how this turned out. Also found the non-ac fan speed switch from the CO car, no chance of accidentally hitting the button now.



Plus they came with nifty mounting brackets that made it a cinch, thank goodness, my attempts were less than stellar to make brackets.

 

I'm not understanding how those brackets work...

What are they attached to?

 

That's a standard gauge bracket. They're just a big U. The two feet push on the panel, pulling the lip against the other side of the panel.

 

OK in regards to piping for the intercooler what do you guys recommend? What I'm thinking is ordering a couple 90 degree bends and then welding straight pipe sections to them and using only 2 silicone couplers for the turbo and intercooler.

Is it unrealistic to make it a one piece pipe? Just sitting here making several drawing of the easiest way to straight shot it from the turbo to the intercooler with the least amount of bends.

Also, will the 15% reduction of tubing diameter with non-mandrel bent metal really affect much? I'd love to just go to a local muffler shop and have it done but no one in the state of Utah has a mandrel bender.

 

Oh that makes sense. So the feet aren't actually attached. They're just pulled in. Neat. Now i wish i hadn't thrown all those ******* out. Derp.


After all this... you want crush bent intercooler piping? I swear i should give you negative props for that.