Intercooler Piping
 

Hello,

Reaching out for some suggestions. I am closing in on finishing up installing a TSE EFR kit in my '96 (hope this is the right section). Finally getting to building some charge piping. After clocking the turbo and having a actual look at what could work, I am realizing the limitations of pop up head lights. Anyone would care to share their ideas/success/failures of running charge pipe for this turbo/mani and chassis or similar. I am initially planning on keeping the AC and PS in place. Not seeing a whole lot of threads out there address the issues, maybe i'm looking wrong... Its seems at this point i'll need to employ a fairly convoluted plumbing system to get this working; maybe a 180* right off the compressor outlet, seems less than ideal. or go through the wheel well which seems like a worse idea.

In order from turbo to throttle body:

• 45deg 2" in/out silicone coupler, aims straight down
• 45deg 2" aluminum bend, aims mostly to the driver's side and a bit forward as well
• ~75deg 2" aluminum bend. This welds to the prior bend, sits directly underneath the swaybar, parallel to the ground, perpendicular to the intercooler
• 90deg 2.5" to 2" silicone reducer. This completes the piping into the intercooler

Post-IC is a bit harder:

• 90deg 2.5" in/out silicone coupler, aims straight backwards (outlet parallel with ground)
• 3x aluminum bends. One 90deg, one 60deg, one 45deg. These will be welded together. The idea is to get behind the swaybar, then wrap up and around it from behind. The 45deg bend is last in the sequence, and the piping comes up between the alternator, frame rail, and sway bar. The 90deg and 60deg can swap places depending on the exact path you take. Tuck it as tight as you can to the pulleys to leave clearance for fans.
• 90deg 2.5" to 2.5" (OEM TB) or 2.75" (Skunk2 TB) coupler into throttle body

The only other secret is to keep all the piping inboard of the sway bar on either side. That ensures clearance for the wheel/tire at full lock.

Before I could weld, I would fit all the pipes with 2" painters tape, then transport to a welder for tacking and welding. To trim/adjust silicone couplers, use a hose clamp as a guide and a brand new razorblade in a box knife. Fresh blades go through silicone like butter, and the guide makes the cut foolproof.

Beadroll both pipes when you're done and use good stainless worm-drive clamps.

Oh man, a definitive answer indeed! thank you sir. I will be ordering up some pipe bends tonight, this is a big help. When it comes to welding this thing up it should be interesting, a friend will keep me on the straight an narrow but I hope build it without assistance. appreciate the advice.

Cold side, you can do it with three 2.5" 90* couplers, and a 45* aluminum bend. 90 out of the intercooler pointing toward the back of the car, 45* aluminum pipe parallell to the ground and pointing toward the driver side. This will get you inboard of the sway bar and under it, as well as directly down from the throttle body. Then a 90* coupler pointing directly up, staight piece of pipe and a 90 into the throttle body.

Going into the driver's side fender can work really well on an NA. Here's some picture of my DD (not the TSE kit though):

Hot Side:
https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...0/#post1252898

Cold Side:
https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...9/#post1251966

^hornetball's setup is really nice. If I had known about that method when I did mine, I would have done it that way.

Just FYI what works on one set of years won't necessarily work on other set of years. IE IC pipes are specific 90-93, 94-97, 99/00, and 01-05. The different AC and PS line layouts through out the years really throw kinks in making universal pipes. Larger swaybars and radiators and fans can also cause issues.

Here are a couple of pics of a vertical outlet. Obviously, Sav's suggestions are probably the best method. The first two (erlier version) have a custom 2" bend, the third (final version) is a standard 90 alum cut short with a 90 deg coupler. I don't seem to have any handy of the hotside intercooler piping. I never liked the 180 or tight 90 on this setup, but I didn't notice any obvious performance issues.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b72189c830.jpg


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...0af9c46ff4.jpg

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c76bce0219.jpg

This gives you an idea of what I am doing on the next version.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...a8eb699879.jpg

what is the purpose of moving the alternator to the driver side?

and what is this flex pipe going into above the turbo?

Insanity?

proof?

actually...

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...869cbdacec.jpg


and aluminum loses ~half its strength by 600 F

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...6df1888843.jpg

Jeez guys some awesome suggestions. Love all the photos. I think Savington makes the most sense from a volume reduction stand point. While I also agree with schrodinger that Hornetball sure has a clean setup. Probably easier for me to build as well. I ordered enough bends to go either way. Likely I'll aim to go for the Sav's suggestion and falling back to the routing path hornetball used if i am having any clearance issues. You all might be disappointed but I am going with alumizined mild steel as a material, mainly for ease of welding. Is brazing aluminum strong enough for this application? I guess its something that's pretty easy to change if my skillset and tool set progresses :dunno:

As for aluminum brazing, it's plenty strong. I really do DD mine and have more than 70K miles with the turbo on it.

Not only is aluminum light, but it's really convenient to order the bends you need from Aluminum Pipes and similar vendors. That said, I've seen a few people use steel for their intakes -- it works.

Steel works, aluminum is better in every way. Even if you can't weld it, it's still worthwhile to mock them up in aluminum and then have them welded elsewhere.

yeah, the shame! I get it though, certainly a reason Aluminum is the standard. Since this is shaping into a little learning project for me i'll likely have a go at it with steel to get started. No doubt I'll want to change it 6 months out... but getting in the experience is important to me.

Thanks for leading me here Catalyst! Mind sharing your results when complete?

Sure, I'll be getting the pipe bends this week. Keep you posted. It may not be pretty, fair warning.

I'm running a 120* out my skunk2 TB almost straight down, slightly towards the passenger side outside, so it clears my fans and sway bar, then a 90*, 90*, to my IC

Got some pipe bends and straights in and took the opportunity yesterday to workout the suggestions presented. I am not seeing any possible way to route this with the compressor outlet pointed down without major rework of the PS reservoir location and likely ac compressor removal. There is just no room. Even with the 2" pipe, it's so tight in there. Looks like most that have posted here have done modifications to accommodate this orientation of the outlet. At this point, for the hot side, looks like plan B is a go, which will be following hornetballs technique bringing behind the fender. Here is a look at the layout I'm working with. Just an update for anyone paying attention.

Thanks for the photos! I don't have an AC compressor, but I do have PS. I think I'm going to try to flip the PS inlet 180 towards the front of the car and try to run the turbo down like you originally had tried.

It's definitely tight if you keep all the options.

PS hose has to go. Also swap to an NB-style lower radiator hose which will give more room Once you move those two, there's room. It's very tight to the A/C compressor. A new PS hose/fitting is on my shortlist, but in the interim, you can order some 15mm OD tube from McMaster and bend your own. Mine wraps around the backside of the IC pipe, along a similar path but in metal form which leaves room for the IC pipe. It's the low-pressure side so there's no concern with the hose popping off.

Ok thanks. That seems pretty straightforward.

notch your frame and clock the compressor housing further down. if you're comfortable with that. theres many different levels of notching it, which go from cutting the pinch weld and hammering it down to full out notch with weld in plates. Mine is a mixture of the two.

also you could ditch PS, or since thats the low pressure side you can cut that hard pipe down some and use a flex hose to move it where you need it.

There is no reason to notch the frame rail.

There is if you don't want everything rubbing up against everything else. I have your turbo kit with a manual rack and no a/c and that was even tight. I wasn't cool with my rad hose (one piece from rad to inlet) rubbing on my compressor outlet. No offense man but this kit fits like crap on an NA. The dp wouldn't clean the tub below the heater core hoses, had to cut and notch the pin weld there, I had to bang in the floor a bit behind the gas pedal. And notch my hood to clear the wg actuator. Amongst other things. Just giving my input for my similar problem

The lower radiator hose interference is 100% BS, sorry. Not sure what to say about that other than "no fucking way". I don't know who made your lower hose but if it's OEM or OEM-style, there should be no interference, not even close. I have an NA race car on my rack right now, in fact, with an NB lower hose and my EFR kit, and there's a solid 3/4" of clearance all the way around the compressor outlet coupler. Clocking it deeper into the frame rail would just reduce the clearance I have. I've done half a dozen installs now with OEM lower rad hoses and none of them hits there. The OEM hose goes behind the compressor outlet with room to fit the drain line between the two, even.

The DP clearance to the tub is a known issue, we're going to tweak the DP fitment to hopefully cure the footwell issues. About 30% of cars need a tiny bit taken off the rear edge of the package shelf (less than 1/4" in all cases I've seen). No need to weld afterwards, that area is stitch welded and you aren't taking off enough material to compromise those welds. The mods there are far less extreme than what FM requires for installing their kit. The footwell issue affects fewer cars but more drastically. There is a lot of variance in the footwells, up to 3/4" or so. For NAs, maybe 1 in 10 cars has the issue, less for NBs. I have yet to see a car here with a "big" footwell, unfortunately.

The WG actuator does hit the hood on the NA. There isn't room to lower the turbo and clear the frame rail and the PS pump at the same time. BW's available "cheater bracket" kit cures this issue completely. If you have hood vents in an NA, it's also a non-issue since the bracing that causes the interference is deleted with Singular's hood vents.

On my every-option NB, the only mods required to fit the kit were the 15mm metal PS hose I mentioned above. The compressor outlet sits against the A/C compressor but just barely, not hard enough to cause any issues even in the long-term.

I appreciate the thorough reply and acknowledgment of known issues. My lower rad hose is a FM2 hose from when I was running an FM2 kit. Same with my compressor outlet. I already had notched my frame for my fm2 so I just simply extended it another 2inches and gave myself the extra room I wanted. Was it necessary. No. But it helped. My car seems to just have all the issues possible. https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f948b5a296.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...33f134a4ea.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...4a422f4be9.jpg

Yeah, the FM hose and our outlet are going to want to locate exactly the same real estate. :) The OEM hose actually curves backwards slightly, around the back of the turbo, and then tucks up against the frame rail before turning down towards the ground/radiator. The comp outlet sits completely inboard and forward of the OEM hose. Going back to an OEM hose may have required tweaking the lower FM2 hose as well.

I see. It's been over 4 years since I've seen it with the oem style. Well either way. That was my solution. Might work for someone else. Might not. Thanks for the help.

Any updates on this?

after some internal turmoil, i decided to remove the A/C. had it evacuated and pulled the equipment last week. happy with the decision. got the nb lower radiator hose in there as well.

working on the reroute of the power steering hose this week. other than that just busy hard finding time to get to the car. i'm still waiting on a TSE part that would complete the build so really just taking my time. Hoping to get to the intercooler pipe soon, will update when i do.

Catalyst,

I am interested to see how you are going to use the NB lower. I have tried to mock up the FM lower using an NB lower hose with undesirable results. FM mentioned that a 1.6 lower should be used, but I have not tried that yet.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5e12669fde.jpg


Also, planning to flip/bend the P/S fitting 180 degrees to make room for the turbo.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...fe37feb364.jpg

Parts almost gathered season is getting close.

I forgot to post photos. Followed savingtons suggestions to a tee and had zero problems. Already got one track day in with the turbo.... Its so good!