Fitting new intercooler photos

tomgeer · March 6, 2008

Thought I would post some pictures of the Greddy intercooler being fitted.

The FMIC kit is fantastic and comes with everything you need, Thanks to Nic (import pimp) for supplying it by the way.

I did it with my younger brother who is a mechanic last weekend. I'm no good at write ups so I'll just highlight the main points, I would point out that you don't need to be a mechanic, anyone with a bit of practical ability and more importantly patience could attempt this, and I recommend that they do, it's not as complicated as it seems.

No specialist tools needed, just a basic tool kit, socket set, screwdrivers, pliers, that kind of stuff.

Started by taking out the front engine undertray, the splash guards in the wheel arches, the headlights, and the coolant resevoir in front of the radiator.

Hardest job is removing the front bumper, took ages to find all the bolts and clips, theres about 460,000000 of them if I recall rightly.

Removing stock SMIC and pipe work is easy once the front bumper is off.

Take off PAS cooler pipes and relocate in front of passenger wheel. If you have two pairs of hands you can do this without having to drain the power steering fluid out, just get someone to put their finger over the hole in the resevoir and be very quick when attaching the new hose back on once you have fitted it in place.

I decided to take the active spoiler off completely because you can't use it anyway and it saves fastening alot of bolts back on that you won't need.

The air con fan on the front of the radiator needs to come off, apparently its not essential.

Bolt FMIC into place, its obvious how to do that. I had to gently bend the air con pipes by the bonnet catch back to fit the FMIC into place, cable tied bonnet release cables to the nearest available area.

Fit the supplied ducting pipework on (its quite tight but it does fit) and join with the silicone sleeves and jubilee clips, I used a bit of WD-40 to get the pipes to slide in nice and easily. You may have to slightly alter the small pipes near the passenger front wheel, I did this by very gently bending them out of the way, be careful not to kink or damage the pipes.

Reassemble every thing back together, you will notice how much easier it is without the active spoiler on if you decide to take it off, if you leave it on apparently it will need to be permanently down.

Last job is the greddy coolant bottle, it is designed to fit in beside the battery but if you have HID lights like me then the chances are the HID control unit will be in the way, I fitted my new bottle on the other side near the drivers headlight using the supplied bracket as there is more room on that side.

thats about it, my car is now overboosting to 1.4 bar instead of 1.2 so I need a smaller restrictor ring. I have just bought a Greddy boost controller too so will be fitting that soon aswell as an apexi S-afc II (if anyone knows how to wire it into a facelift ECU harness please let me know;))

I would recommend allowing a full day probably two to be sure for this installation if you are not familiar with the job it took us about 6 hours