Fmic Installed!

[Auburn T5]

It took about 6 hours of sort of figuring stuff out as I went along but everything came together nicely and everything is running great.

Anyways, I ordered a precision turbo intercooler along with the following pieces of 2.25" piping

The only things not pictured that were needed were a few extra T bolt clamps and a 2.5" to 2.25" reducer for the throttle body. I thought it was 2.25" but it's a little bigger I'm using a 2" plumbing coupler at the moment I got from Homedepot until I can make it back out to the shop to get my reducer. It's working but not holding tight on the TB (more on that later) Also not pictured is one of those little aluminum nipples that would be welded to the piping right at the throttle body inlet for the air idle control hose to plug into. No one locally has them and I couldn't wait to have one shipped so I got a brass plumbing 1/2" to 3/8" union as I wasn't sure what the inner diameter of the IAC hose was. Turns out it's 1/2" so what I did was took a drill and drilled out the inside of the piece to a single diameter as it get smaller at the 3/8" end. After that, I took a 1/2" drill bit and drilled a hole in the intercooler pipe right at the TB connector. The hole was a little too small to screw the brass fitting in so I used a dremel grinding stone to lightly grind a little bit more out. Just enough to screw the brass fitting in. It was extremely tight but not wanting to take any chances, I coated both the inside joint and outside where the brass fitting screws in with a couple of layers of JB weld. It doesn't look too pretty but it will do until I can get an aluminum nipple to have welded on in place of the brass fitting.

So when you're ordering your piping, try and get the aluminum nipple piece to weld onto the pipe to save yourself that headache. It wasn't hard just a lot of work.

Anyways, moving along...

The bumper removal was easy. Drilled out the 4 rivets holding the wheel well liner to the back of the bumper. (turn the wheels to get a good angle on the rivets.

Next I removed the splash guard. 2 screws hold it in and a small tab on the back of it releases it.

After that, I used a torx bit to remove all the screws holding a second plastic guard piece to the bumper.

After that, there will be 2 large bolts to remove. It uses I think a 15mm socket. They're the only ones that big so they're hard to miss. Mine put up a fight so I had to pop out the plastic pieces in the bumper that are next to the fog lights and use a breaker bar to break them loose. I was rewarded by tons of the most disgusting rusty muddy sludge water pouring out of the bolt hole as I loosened the bolt. I recommend sitting on teh ground in front of the bumper when doing this and having a towel below the bumper in case this happens to you.

So after those bolts were removed, (and the fog lights are unplugged) the bumper slides straight off. If it doesn't come off, you probably missed a couple of torx screws.

After this is done, remove all the factory intercooler piping along with the snorkel that connects the air box to the air inlet at the front of the air dam.

At this point, the battery needs to be removed. Following that, there are 2 large screws holding the battery tray to the frame and 2 smaller screws on the top of the battery tray holding the cruise control module. Remove these and the cruise control module under the battery tray can be removed. Unplug it's power connector and vacuum line and set it aside.

Now, for the air pump, it's no secret that it has to be removed from it's factory location in order for the cold side of the intercooler piping to get to the throttle body so before I decided whether or not to totally remove it or leave it, I unbolted it and moved it up to where the battery tray used to be.

In this pic, one of the bolts holding it to the frame is partially out and the bolt just above it is the 2nd one. Remove both of these to free the air pump.

The final obstacle is the tow hook. This had to be removed to get the hot side of the piping around the black AC canister and up to the turbo so we used a plasma cutter to eat through it. It can probably be done with a reciprocating saw (sawzall) or even a dremel but the metal in the hook is extremely strong and would take forever with a dremel. So if you know of any shops (most exhaust shops) that you cold drive the car to and have them cut the hook off, it will save you a lot of time.

Once this was out of the way, it was time to mount the intercooler. I'm not sure if all the cars have them or not but there are 3 screw holes in the frame right where the intercooler is mounted that I was able to thread a couple of zip ties through (drilled a hole in each mounting bracket on the intercooler) and get an easy mock up location for the intercooler.

Now it was time to start playing with the intercooler piping to see what would need to be done.

At first, it may seem like there isn't enough piping but as Mark (BlackT5) said, the pipes can really only go one way and going that one route from turbo to throttle body, it WILL be enough piping unless you screw up so pay attention as I explain where the pipes were cut.

Starting at the turbo, a 90* bend comes over the engine (a la RIP kit) to a pair of 45* bend pipes.

The first pipe connecting to the turbo, I cut about 2 or 3 inches off the end so that it didn't sit so high over the engine. The hood wouldn't close all the way with it sitting that high so I had to remove enough to let the hood close but not so much so that it laid down on the engine.

The 45* piece coming after that had a little cut off from each end and the second 45* piece had a little cut off of the end that connects to the first 45* pipe. I made these cuts last becuase I started running the pipes from the intercooler.

From the passenger (hot) side of the intercooler, I used a 180* J pipe. I cut it in half directly in the center of the bend becuase that U has to be extended out wider to wrap around the black AC canister (I have no idea what it's technically called but I'm sure someone will enlighten me). Seeing as to how Sam was busy getting his car ready for the SE turbo bricks meet that starts in about 6 hours, he didn't have time to weld up a piece of the extra pipe that was cut from the other pieces into that U to extend it out so I used a silicone coupler. It got the job done until we have a free weekend to weld a lot of these together.

The J pipe end that goes into the intercooler's coupler had a little bit cut off so that it didn't extend out so far past the black AC thing. I cut enough of it off so it gets closer but not too close. I don't have a picture of the hot side of my piping but I used Mark's picture below for a reference.

Ok. After that bend is made, I took another J pipe and cut it in half at the center of the bend. Here comes the hard part. Getting the piping up from that U bend up to the 45* piece going to the turbo requires some elbow grease, a little wire moving and lots of PATIENCE.

What I did was try to get that J down to the U from above. It became apparent that the wiring harness that's in that plastic sheath type thing is the biggest obstacle. There's also what appears to be a fuse or some sort of connector in white plastic attached to a little bracket on the front of the alternator. This was in the way so I popped it out of the metal bracket and tucked it back against the back of the alternator and bent the metal bracket holding it away to free up some precious space.

At this point, I decided to try from below to get the J pipe through the space and it worked. It's an EXTREMELY tight fit and attached a silicone sleeve to the end of the J as I knew once the pipe was in, it'd be impossible to get it on when it was down in the tight space. Removing the little air hose connecting to the ECU box helped and also pull out the oil dipstick as the handle will get in your way (or at least it got in my way).

No cuts at the top of the J pipe nor at the jointing piece of that 45* pipe were made. This pic shows where my coupler ended up and how the 45* piece fit to it.

After that J pipe is in place and the end of the J (at the curve) is in the silicone copuler coming from the U, it's time to get the end of the first 45* pipe into the connector at the end of the J pipe. This is the other hard part. It took some work and elbow grease to get it in. There are a lot of stiff hoses that won't move very much but it can be done. The 45* bend on mine bends right in front of the dip stick.

After that is in, you can breathe easy as the rest of the install is a walk in the park. Mark gets a cookie with teh whipped cream and a gold star for figuring out how to get another 1/4" of piping up through that area. I saw no way to do it without moving the plastic sheath that held the wiring.

At this point, I made the cut at the 90* pipe that attaches to the turbo and then fit it into the coupler on the turbo. Then I fit in the other 45* pipe connecting to the 90* pipe to see how much would need to be cut from the 45* pipes to give a nice snug fit that wasn't bowing out or causing wierd fittings in the silicone couplers. I could have probably gotten away without cutting them but they wouldn't have had a solid fit in the silicone couplers so I cut enough off the ends of them to get a nice snug fit. Play around with them and you'll see how much needs to be cut.

Now for the cold side of the piping.

Coming out of the intercooler, another J bend 180* pipe. I don't think I cut this piece at all. The next piece will be a small L shaped piece of pipe that was left over from the J pipe that was cut that was manipulated up next to the alternator. So use that little right angle piece to point up towards the throttle body. The final piece will be your other 90* pipe. Quite a bit was lopped off of one side as very little pipe is needed at the coupler that attaches to the throttle body. This 90* piece's long section of pipe should reach down and fit easily into the coupler on that small 90* angle piece.

And that's it. Here are pics of the cold piping.

At this point, all the piping should be mock fitted up. Check the coupler connections to make sure all the pipes going in and out of them aren't at radical angles going into them. You obviously want the pipes to be as straight as possible when connecting together.

The last part will be attaching all the pipes together. I found the easiest way to do this was to remove the piping in sections so I wouldn't forget which pieces went where. I started by removing the 90* pipe coming from teh turbo and the two 45* pipes attached to it. I used my hump connector joining the two 45* pieces. At this point, I realized that I didn't have enough Tbolt clamps so I re-used some of the worm type band clamps.

Then I removed the J pipe that sits next to the alternator followed by the U bend going into the intercooler.

On the cold side, I pulled the pipe going to the throttle body followed by the 90* angle and J pipe going into the intercooler.

This is what all the piping looks like out of the car. Hopefully it will illustrate how all the pipes attach and which pipes go where.

After I took these pictures I started attaching clamps to the couplers and loosely tightening them.

The most helpful tip I can give as far as getting the J pipe and 45* pipe that run in front of the intake manifold clamped together is to put the coupler on the end of the J pipe where it meets the 45* pipe and use a worm clamp and tighten it down hard. Then slip a second worm clamp on and once the U bend coming from the intercooler is mounted up, fit the J pipe up back into position and clamp it down hard into the end of the U bend so it can't move.

Take the end of the 45* bend (this end had a bead on the end) and wrestle it down back into the silicone coupler. Before tightening that 2nd worm clamp, I attached the 90* bend at the turbo and the other 45* bend, shifted them around into position and then started at the turbo, tightened that clamp down and then tightend the joint there at the first 45* pipe then made sure the 45* pipe at the J bend joint was nice and straight then tightend that band clamp and then the 2 clamps at the hump connector. That should take care of all the piping on the hot side.

The cold side is fairly self explanitory as none of the pieces require any specific order of tightening.

Once it's all tight, I moved the air pump and sort of laid it down on the piping there at the small 90* bend up to the throttle body and laid the cruise control module next to it. It will be messy if you leave it like this but at the moment, I see no other real option. I laid the battery tray on that and then put the battery back in, attached the air idle control hose to the brass nipple, clamped it down and fired it up.

Here's the rest of the pics I took.

You can see that the hood fire shield thing is polishing that 45* pipe and I had to bend down the little bracket that used to hold the factory intercooler pipe as it was rubbing it also.

The last part will be putting the bumper back on. I had to remove my fog lights as they were hitting the piping. That was simple and getting the bumper back on was easy also. It slides back on on those two white guide tracks. I had a friend push the bumper forward a little to line up the bolt holes.

As far as driving impressions go, I'm very pleased. Sam followed me home as he lives about a mile from me to be there in case something went wrong (which it did). I got into boost once and blew a hose off. Rest assured, if you didn't tighten any clamps tight enough, the boost will be more than happy to show you where you didn't get them tight enough.

I re-attached the hose, tightened it up and drove home without getting back into boost.

This morning, I went back over all the couplers with the ratchet and made sure they were all totally tight and took it out for a spin. First thing I noticed was the increase in power in the mid range. It feels like it pulls harder in the mid range RPM's and lag isn't nearly as apparent. It spools into boost much quicker now. that jump in 2nd and 3rd gear from 5 to 10 psi is nearly instantaneous where as before I could watch it slowly creep up to 10~12.

At the moment, I'm still using that plumbing attachment. It holds but barely. I'm going to pick up the reducer hose this afternoon becuase the rubber is heating up and getting spongy and the boost is pushing it off the TB no matter how tight that clamp is on there. I stripped one clamp trying to get it nice and tight so it looks like the heat is causing it to get mushy and the boost is pushing it off. Watching the boost gauge, It will jump up quickly to 12psi and then just as quickly slump back down to 10 and hold steady at 10.

I'm not sure if it's just spiking to 12 or if the slipping hose at the throttle body is preventing it from staying at 12. The rest of the clamps are all extremely tight so I'm 99% confident that they're not leaking.

So, anyways, that's about it. It's definatly something I'm glad I took the time to do as unpleasant as that hot piping was to figure out, hopefully I've shed enough light on the situation that you guys wanting to do this will have a bit more info to help you out than I had. I'm not sure if the ME7 guys can use all this or not but hopefully at least some of it will help.

I didn't have to cut the frame or bumper or anything like that to get the intercooler to fit or to get the bumper to fit back on. Whether or not you'll have to or not, I'm not sure. If you use the same intercooler or one with similar dimensions, you shouldn't have to. The precision intercooler's are top quality and although they look small, I've talked with several guys who are gurus on turbo applications and they say the precision units are top quality and will greatly outperform the cheap Ebay intercooler's. Whether or not it will matter at the low HP most of us make or not, I'm not sure but one of the guys at the shop I did the work at has a beast civic that puts down over 500 whp. He originally had an ebay intercooler and switched to a precision intercooler that was a little smaller and made an extra 60 hp.

Tonight I'll be going to the track to see if I can drive the car well or not. It'll be the first time taking it to the track so my expectations aren't set high at all. Whatever it runs, that's what it runs

Tomorrow though will be the big day. We'll be putting it on the dyno and I'll see what sort of numbers I've got. Again, expectations aren't too high seeing as to how the thermometer in the dyno room yesterday was reading 121* F @ 85% humidity

I'll post updates tomorrow. Feel free to ask any questions as I'm sure I left out some stuff.

[gdizzle]

It's not being held by zipties anymore is it? :huh:

[Auburn T5]

It's not being held by zipties anymore is it?

Unfortunately yes until all the welding goes down. I've got 3 of the really thick "police handcuff" zip ties on each end. It's not going anywhere.

[ACES70]

Very Nicely done.....except for the zipties.

[matty.bou]

Very nice. I especially like the use of the zip ties. :P

[ViperVette]

Looks good, any links to the intercooler or the piping kit? or did you order the piping all seperate?

[Chilled man]

Fantastic Wright up and should be pinned

also a link to where you go everything would be very helpfull also .

[Oreo931]

Fantastic Wright up and should be pinned

also a link to where you go everything would be very helpfull also .

OMG Justin are you kidding!!?>? WRITE.

Great WRITE up. I am also interested in where you got the piping as well. Great info in this thread.

How much did the total project cost you?

[Chilled man]

OMG Justin are you kidding!!?>? WRITE.

Great WRITE up. I am also interested in where you got the piping as well. Great info in this thread.

How much did the total project cost you?

hey I am tired outside all day in the sun

[PsychoBeano]

Awesome. Did you say what the total price was and where you sourced everything? Also, would you happen to know if my car has an air pump?

[Oreo931]

Awesome. Did you say what the total price was and where you sourced everything? Also, would you happen to know if my car has an air pump?

IIRC 95 and older do not...it might actually be 97 and older, but im not sure.

[Yellow95]

IIRC 95 and older do not...it might actually be 97 and older, but im not sure.

97 GLT (Low Pressure Turbo) has an air pump. 95-97 T-5 do not. Airpump came briefly with the early motronic 4.4.

Gary

[ACES70]

97 GLT (Low Pressure Turbo) has an air pump. 95-97 T-5 do not. Airpump came briefly with the early motronic 4.4.

Gary

99+ GLT does not have Airpump. Once again nicely done.

[Auburn T5]

Intercooler bought from here.

http://www.nolimitmotorsport.com/prod/AS1021

got my piping from a local guy Greg Carter that runs this website.

http://www.go-autoworks.com/store.html

I chose to buy from him because he's local and I didn't have to pay for shipping like on the ebay kits and also since I knew exactly what pieces I needed, I didn't have to buy an ebay kit and pay for extra pipes I wouldn't need.

Intercooler w/free shipping was $230

Piping with all connectors, clamps, etc was $180.

[7 VII 7]

holy crap thats a great deal