It most definately did NOT go as I had planned it to. It took several trips to Napa to get all the connectors and elbow pieces, along with hoses, clamps, and electircal pieces I needed. Working on it all by yourself as well had its draw backs.
Rerouting the PCV lines was a pain in the rear, not necissarily hard, but a pain. That line that comes up from the bottom of the engine and goes to that 'F' tube proved to be a problem for me. I moved it strait back towards the cabin of the car under a braket I had for the AWIC, and it ended up being slightly too high and butted up against the turbo to intercooler hose. In the end, though, I have all my lines running an identical routing as they did stock, only the lines take different paths to get to their desitination, but they are all the same destination. I was able to avoid Laurel's PCV mess that she had sitting over her turbo (no offense Laurel), although having her mess might have made some things a little easier.
Because everything is so tight in my setup, I had to have the turbo to intercooler hose attached to the turbo from the start, as well as the hose to the throttle body, and then fandangle the intercooler into place onto those hoses. That is probably the worst part of the whole ordeal. I have some samco hoses that fit well, but of course bend and contort. The turbo to intercooler samco hose has the bov line built into it. It's really nice, but needed to be cut to fit since it is meant for a different intercooler origionally. For some reason, that same hose also butts up against the throttle body pretty bad, so I had to actually had to disconnect the throttle body to get it connected. It didn't seem that Laurel had that problem, so I'm not sure if my turbo just seems to sit closer or what.
The water pump I mounted under the battery on the fender well. I wired the ground for the pump to a windshield washer bolt, and then ran power from the battery and the powered pump line into the car under the dash through the rubber stopper under the brake booster (same one I used for my boost gauge). At that point I ran the lines to a relay, which was grounded under the dash as well. The switched voltage line I used had a fuse on it and I ran that to the ignition connector under the dash. I went to the junkard and cut the ignitino connector out of a car there, and made a plug and play harness so I didn't have to cut any of my own wires in my car. The pump will only turn on when the key is on the 'on' position, but will not turn on when 'accessories' is the position it sits at.
The pump was fairly loud, a lot louder than I thought it would be, but when the car is running you don't notice it much. I was thinking of putting in a switch to kill the pump if I wanted, because of the nose, but after I drove the car I realized you don't really hear it much.
Of all the brakets I had for the intercooler, only one really lined up well and was ablet to be made to work. One braket does a TON to making that thing solid. My intercooler is not against the back firewall and the whole system is very tight. I doubt it moves at all, but most of that is due to the one bracket I have. I used some hardlines to run from the intercooler, over the top of the the head to the front of the engine, and from there hoses take the coolant to the pump and to the radiator. The hard line is the stock hard line found overseas, and I just bolted one of its bolt holes down with an intake manifold bolt.
I'm using the radiator for the overseas cars for now. My AC condensor had a leak so I pulled it out temporarily and decided to use the overseas radiator to see how it did. It most definately does not fit in the place of the AC condensor like i origionally thought. After looking at some diagrams, I figured out where it is sappose to go. It is sapose to go in front of the bracket that runs up and down and supports the trunk latch. On our bumpers, the bumper is RIGHT there, so the overseas bumper must sit further out or be cut around the radiator. I just secured it where the AC condensor had been.
In the end I had to change my PCV routings several times due to problems, and I had a stud coming out of my CES uppipe that was too tall and I couldn't get it any lower, so I yanked it out. (it was a stud for the support bracket, so I figured I was ok). I had problems getting the intercooler on, I had problems with fitting the intercooler hoses against the throttle body, and the PCV lines I had rerouted, and probably a half a dozen other things. Problems is the name of the game though, so just expect them. You are putting in something that wasn't meant to be there in the first place.
I relocated the coolant tank to the front of the car using a wrx coolant tank. The quality I love, the design I hate. There is a thread in this forum about it if you want my reasoning, but to sum it up: It is a pain to fill ( I ended up filling the radiator with a makeshift coolant bong through the 5/16" radiator line), and as it turns out I think if you disconnect the hard line that went to the water pump, and reroute that line from the front of the car directly to the water pump it may cause some trouble. It seems that the hard line has a coolant hose going to the intake manifold (I think). When I was filling the coolant I had it actually push coolant back in to that line and empty on my garage floor when teh radiator was near full. I put a bolt in both rubber line ends of that hard pope and hose clamped them down real tight.
That's about it for now. Pictures will have to come later, cause I haven't taken any yet (yes I know I should have, but I was just trying to get this done as fast as I could, and it took HOURS longer than i thought it would).
Wiring the pump went without a hitch, and I was real worried I'd see leaks or something bad happened when I started the car, because of all the changes I made. When I started her initially she ran a bit rought, but I chalked it up to the timing belt, cause once I stopped her to check some stuff and connect the ac fan (which I forgot to connect), she ran fine (which reminds me, the AC compressor is still in the car and I need to disconnect it so I can't start it accidentally. Not sure it is good for that thing to be trying to do stuff when there is not belt turning it). The car started on the first turn over and everythign was tight, and nothing leaked. At least not that I've noticed so far.
What i think: well I've only driven it once, the intercooler sure looks cool in the car, and I think I will like its benefits, but an air to air like the wrx intercooler might be easier to take in and out. I don't think I will be putting in my AC again, but if I do I'm going to have to change some of my routing for the coolant lines, because currently they won't play well together.
-Ryan
Here are some pictures, just click on the pictures for a bigger shot or to a link to the gallery. Now that I think about it I didn't get any shots of the coolant tank relocation. I also didn't get any shots of the pump since it was all together before I took the shots.
couple more shots found here
Shots are a mess, I actually have the black plastic cover over the engine bay as well, and that makes things look a lot cleaner.
