mx5cartalk.com

Stock cooler



There's a clip holding the front bumper to the panel. In order to pull off the bumper it has to be depressed and released. Tape added to stop paint from getting scratched when the clip was depressed, it worked well.



Mazdaspeed suggests that you undo clamps on the fog light to release it, no way, just undoing the clip is much easier.



How it looks with no front bumper.



Yes, those are empty pot plants and they worked a treat to centre and align the intercooler into place.



Stock cooler off, I used an electric saw to cut the pipes. Cooler is 72cm in length i cut 73cm, why so little cut? Well there is plenty of free play with the cooler pipes and the silicone reducers go completly over the pipes with some soapy water. Therefore no slop.



Filled the edges of the pipe and cleanning up all the metal bits.



With silicone joiners on 2 to 2.25 inch



The metal brackets that i used, are brackets used to secure aftermarkets stereos. Quite strong and able to bend with the help of a vice and pliers. I contorted them to fit into the existing stock bracket holder. I used spring washers and rubber grommets to ensure that they remain secure and absorb the vibration.



Finished product.



Im afraid to admit it took me 7 hours to do it all pretty much alone, you need a second person to help with re-installation of the bumper.

Props to

Boyracer & Mazdaspeed

Nice job. Looks much more serious than Mazda's effort.

oh yeh very nice work indeed.. 7 hours well worth it id say

are you going to retune the car?

Got a few pics of it all together with the front bar back on?

Awesome effort and a great result.
But did you do that using only scissor jacks to hold the car up?!!!

Nice! I am going to do this same mod!

Astroboysoup wrote:are you going to retune the car?

I dont have aftermarket ecu or piggyback yet so i cant really tune it, ECU hopefully to come after AEM air intake and BEGi inlet is installed.

Fuzzlet wrote:Got a few pics of it all together with the front bar back on?

The last photo is what it basically looks like, I have mania mesh grill in my nose dam, so you cant really see the intercooler unless your really paying attention now.

ampz wrote: But did you do that using only scissor jacks to hold the car up?!!!

No, in photo 4 you can barely see some large planks of wood running under the chasis rail. I used some old 50 pounds weights as the footings and glued some old rubber stripped mats onto the planks and used that ontop of the weights to support the under body chasis.

Well done, that looks great! 7hrs aint too bad either

Nice job - much better then the oil cooler.

My only concern would be the hoses slipping off under boost later in life once everything gets a little bit of oil on it. I had this happen to me a couple of times on my much modified MX6 turbo until I wised up and got some beads welded onto the pipes. Not fun being stranded in the centre of town waiting for a flat tow.

Good to see you have used quality hose clamps too. Heaps better then the factory item.

Good, clean work there blackster.

Is the new one skinnier as well as narrower, but just longer? I wonder if this increases the airflow resistance, giving you cooler air but less boost once you get to the intake.

Perhaps the tubes are of sufficiently larger internal cross sectional area to counter the effect of the long narrow skinny shape. They cetainly look larger on the outside.

I'd really be interested in your pressure loss across the I/C and temperature reduction compared to the standard I/C. Hard to get similar conditions, though.

Geeze it looks nice, but.

Cheers,
Alf

C+C wrote:
have you noticed any changes to the driveability of the car, noise, lag etc...

Feels smoother, I went out for an early morning drive today @ 6am and the car seems to pull more on the butt dyno compared to what it was. Im seeing 8-8.5 psi in 3rd gear. Didn't notice any lag or extra noise.

To begin with I wasnt expecting any power increase to happen when switching intercoolers. I changed the cooler under the pretence that the stock cooler becomes totally heatsoaked after the first few pulls and that 5-10 degree drop that has been reported would mean a big temp reduction when the turbo is producing 500 degree heat underload.

Casey wrote:My only concern would be the hoses slipping off under boost later in life once everything gets a little bit of oil on it. I had this happen to me a couple of times on my much modified MX6 turbo until I wised up and got some beads welded onto the pipes. Not fun being stranded in the centre of town waiting for a flat tow.

Fair point Casey, however at this point i dont intend in running any more then 9-10psi, running 8psi with the SPM exhaust + cooler and expecting to hit around 9-10psi with the AEM intake. A few of mazda-speed guys are running similar set ups and havent experienced any issues along those lines.

Alf wrote:Is the new one skinnier as well as narrower, but just longer? I wonder if this increases the airflow resistance, giving you cooler air but less boost once you get to the intake.

Perhaps the tubes are of sufficiently larger internal cross sectional area to counter the effect of the long narrow skinny shape. They cetainly look larger on the outside.

I'd really be interested in your pressure loss across the I/C and temperature reduction compared to the standard I/C. Hard to get similar conditions, though.

Stock cooler = 8.5 x 8.5 x 2.5 (2' 1/8 inlet/outlet) = total of 180.65 inches

Cooler used = 21.7' x 5.5' x 3 (2.25' inlet/outlet) = total of 358.05 inches

MX5 racing reported about a 5-10 degree drop from the inlet to the outlet at idle using the same cooler. Not sure what pressure measuring equipment your refering to, however i can say i havent seen any drop in boost since fitting the cooler on my boost gauge. If anything, I have seen a gain of 0.5-1psi on the boost meter.

Your argument was raised on the mazda-speed forum, its also worth noting that the SPM, FM and BEGi cooler is roughly the same size in width, however larger in depth, height and volume then one utilised by myself, boyracer and MX5racing .

Well done Phillip,nice job....

It looks something like this...

you always have some of the nicest cars lou

Nice work. I love the ingenuity of using the pots too!