25th September 2007. Intercooler and Su carb tuning
As I had all the parts it did not take long before I was thinking about the intercooler install. As there was not much info out there on just how much cooling a side mounted intercooler could provide I measured the intake temps before I started and was alarmed to see that as soon as it came into boost I was hitting the 70deg C limit of my sensor. I used some epoxy glue to add mounting flanges to the Mitsubishi intercooler and mounted it into the hole I had cut during the bodywork phase. I'm a bit of a skinflint so could not see spending the huge amounts of money on shiny sillicone elbows yet so just bought some plain rubber elbows for now, I may change them later. I used a 2" steel mandrel bent "U" pipe and was able to sneak the pipe over the brake servo to solve the first problem, the rest of the pipe nicely negotiated the turn around the rocker cover and a final short piece adjusted the angle of the turn out of the turbo. In the end I was quite pleased with the result. Now for a test drive, I was quite surprised just how much the intercooler affected the fuelling. It needed a richer mix at boost levels and rather than use my existing, non IC SU needle I decided to start again. I have some detailed instructions on the Tech pages. Every time I do this I get better so on my second attempt I was able to get the fuelling bang on and am quite pleased with the result. I rechecked the intake temps and was pleased to see that even after a couple of hard 1/4 miles the max I saw was 40deg C,but its generally running in the mid 30's, a hell of an improvement and the car is even faster, I am in the high 15's now with 0-60 around 7.7sec
