Build: 6am-6pm Intercooler Piping Extravaganza

In the beginning there were pipes...

I am really happy with myself after yesterday’s one day turn around on intercooler piping for a customer.  It took every ounce of previous knowledge I had gained from doing mine and Steve’s piping, but it turned out great!

Had I run out of weld gas or wire or piping, it would have been a much much later night.  I began the day at 5am by getting cars out of the driveway and pushing the Track Duty S14 out of the way.  I was ready right at 6am and the customer showed up right at 6:03am, so we were doing great on timing.  We pulled the car in the garage and ripped off the headlights, factory air box, and other small bits.  At that point, about 7:15am, the customer took off for a “fun-filled” day of waiting around Lincoln, NE.  Being that he and his friend were about 7 hours away home, they were going to hang out in town.I broke into a great stride working on my list of things to do:

Cold side pipe – BOV flange, IACV bung
Hot side pipe
Intake pipe – BOV recirc pipe/bung
BOV recirculation pipe
Mod Downpipe (dp)
Permanently Fix Headlights to UP

So by noon, I had the hot side pipe, intake pipe, headlights, and dp mocked and tack welded.

Intake from the front, best angle

Hot side pipe has nice gradual flow, and the intake has nice straight shot prior to bending.

Pretty simple, but strong and effective.

Downpipe extention one. Stainless say hello to mild.

So as you can see, I had to weld mild steel to the stainless pipe. It was made clear to the customer that this would be the case and he was fine with it. I didn’t have the proper shielding gas or wire for stainless welding and the ever looming timeline made it so. At this point, I went inside to grab a quick bite to eat.

When I made it back out and decided to tackle the hardest thing I had left…or so I thought. I got to work on the cold pipe and it went better than I expected. It took a little while to make because I didn’t want to cut too much off the ends and have it add length back.

Cold side, so nice without a fan shroud in the way.

Now, I had to mount the BOV flange and IACV bung on the cold side pipe. The bung was a piece of cake and little was left to the imagination. I placed the BOV underneath and inline with the straight section of the cold side pipe. This gave the BOV recirc a straight shot behind the radiator to the intake pipe. I have no pictures of this since there were no couplers to hold the BOV recirc in place with, but you can see the the recirc pipe in the final picture on top of the radiator support.

Next up was the downpipe (dp). After mocking it up to the turbo elbow and testing the fit with the extension I put in, I realized the rear flange was clocked wrong to the exhaust piping flange. This little bit took me back to putting Steve’s downpipe from his S14 into my S13. We had the same problem, meaning the dp was actually for an S14, or the S15 turbo put the elbow at a different angle. So I cut the dp to exhaust flange off and tack it were it needed to be. It was getting to be a long day at this point, but all I had left was to reinforce the down pipe and finish weld everything.

Second tweak to the rear of the DP. Clocked flange and bent it to correct angle.

All the finished pipe ready for their wire wheeling and WD-40 wipe down.

Finished product installed for picture only, had to be removed for factory stuff to go back on.

At this point the marathon of a day was pretty much over. It was a great experience and I had a blast trying meet the challenge of a one day turn around. I would say if any one thing would have gone wrong it would have been a two day job, but it didn’t and the customer departed at about 6:30pm last night.