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With the intercooler fit snugly in place and John Kuchta back in action, the intercooler plumbing could now be finalized. We sourced an assortment of aluminum 3″ straight sections and mandrel U-bends from Burn’s Stainless. Although they are mostly known for their badass stainless steel merge collectors and race mufflers, Burn’s Stainless also carries various sizes of aluminum pipes and bends along with multi-ply silicone couplers, V-band clamps, double slip connectors, and whatever else a racer has wet dreams about.
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By this time, the crew was burning both ends (and probably the sides too) of the candle and needed 24-hour access to Project 240SX LSR. We simply couldn’t afford to have Project 240SX LSR out of our site so instead, John dropped by and used our band saw to cut and mock up the intercooler piping.
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I honestly didn’t think mocking up the intercooler piping without tack welding it was going to work, but John never ceases to amaze me when it comes to working with metal. Staying true to his nickname, the “sheet metal whisperer”, John Kuchta cut each piece of aluminum pipe and then marked their orientation with a Sharpie marker. He then returned to his shop and welded each of the pipes together along with the Greddy bypass valve flange. I was convinced that not tacking the pipes together in the car would cause alignment issues after the fact. Remarkably, John pulled it off and thankfully, I was wrong.
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The final connection between our Garrett GT28RS, Spearco intercooler, and N1 throttle body was completed with HPS multiply silicone couplings and T-bolt clamps. At the same time, we replaced our old radiator hoses with a pair of silicone hoses from HPS.
The key advantage to using the Spearco air to liquid intercooler, is being able to achieve a dense, sub-ambient temperature charge into the engine. To do this though, we needed to provide our Spearco intercooler with a cold medium in which the heat could transfer into.
