detailed Low cash custom FMIC for 1G (56k WARNING!)

[Jovan Ceklaj]

DISCLAIMER: Do at your own risk, I'm showing what I did.  If you screw up, its your own damn fault

background
My goal with this project was to make a frount mount as cheap as I possibly could, doing as much as I could on my own.  It was a painful learning experience but I think it was worth it.  This was done for a 1G with a 14b turbo. I wanted to show people what a 14b can do, so one of the things I needed was a front mount.

I decided I wanted to make a custom Front mount, so I decided to get a Diesel IC and a patsy to split it with to cut down on cost. My patsy was Andrew Scott .

Please note that some pics are from Andrew's car and some were from mine, I didn't get a paint job half way through

Credit

I cant thank Ryan Lore enough for all his help (I'm sure everyone has said this at least once ) with the endtank design, fabrication help, and putting up with both myself and Andrew hanging around Kinetic for countless hours

Thanks also goes to Lowell Foo at L&R for some parts we needed ASAP, thanks to my old man for his help with the install and the ideas, and Andrew Scott's dad for the leads to a decent aluminum welder

How we did it
We took this IC....


and cut it to get 2 of these....


we then made a cardboard cutout to get the dimensions of how we wanted the endtanks to look and got this....



so then we bought some scrap sheet aluminum and made the mock ups for our endtanks


We ended up having these as all of our endtank pieces


after searching for about 3 days for someone that would weld our endtanks on for us (I'm not skilled enough to do aluminum and dont have the facilities to do it, but I'm working on that :wink: ) we ended up going to North Road radiators in Poco.  It took them a good 2 weeks to get ONE done.  But they did decent work.




welds are fat but its better than I could do, plus it makes sure it wont leak

This was the only place we went expensive style.  We ended up getting Kinetic J pipes.
 

We went with this because we were short on time and it was a relatively hard peice to align properly.

we wanted to go with bigger throttle body elbows so we went with L&R ones.  The size difference is quite noticeable


so now it was time to cut the bumper.  first we made a hole in the driver side by the rad.


then the passenger side one


note that we had to take out the inner bolt hole for the support to get it to fit (more on that blunder later :roll: )

The AC fan had to go, because it was in the way, so remove that.  We could go for slim fans, but that comes later, since both Andrew and I are broke students.  Now the AC line (if equipped) had to be bent out of the way because it was blocking the hole for the driver side hole. Its the black into silver one in the front. CAREFUL NOT TO KINK IT!!!!



next on the agenda was IC pipes. We bought 3 j pipes from Lordco and we used spare BOV flanges we had lying around to make these.  Too bad we ended up with press bent pipes, this made welding a bit difficult because the diameter of the bends was smaller than the straight sections. Stupid Lordco for not being able to read my mind when I wanted mandrel bent



afterwards we needed couplers to put it all together and to get everything beaded.  Again, Kinetic to the rescue.

we bought: -1 45 degree 2.5" coupler
                 -1 2" to 2.5" reducer
                 -2 2.5" bumped couplers (not pictured)

This is what the pipes looked like when it was all said and done


Here is how we routed the LICP

[Jovan Ceklaj]

the power steering bracket had to be cut to make a little extra room for the IC.


basically the steering cooler was GENTLY bent to the back side of the bracket.  The bracket was also cut to make nice slots for the cooling line to fit

Custom brackets were made to mount the IC on the bottom


now we had to mount the actual IC. Here is what mine looks like.  notice the dent in the lower passenger side edge.  thanks to my dad for dropping it there :roll:





Now comes our biggest mistake.
We didnt measure the endtank length properly so it didn't fit between the bumper supports. So what we had to do was cut the hydraulic pistons that hold on the bumper reinforcer and weld them solid.  Yeah, thats safe :roll:

[Jovan Ceklaj]

after that we had to mount the rad fluid overflow bottle. I put it where there is usually the ABS unit.  I dont have ABS, Andrew does. Andrew used a smaller Ocean Spray bottle he found in his back yard (NOTE - HAHA, ghetto!).  To make the BOV dump tube fit, I cut it and put it on upside down.  It actually fit without any kinks in it




now throw the bumper back on and hope you didnt break too many bolts taking it off. I did :roll:

so now, you're done. Take a deep breath look at that smile



Performance difference

For a 14b, the difference was pretty amazing to me. I made a pseudo table to show you the differences
(NOTE - I have fuel control, DO NOT turn up your boost to 17 psi if you dont)

BEFORE                                                
15 psi                                                                      
10 counts of knock                                            
14 deg of timing :shock:                                      

AFTER
17 psi  
occasional 1 count
19-21 deg

But best of all, the power is consistent.  Before I would get 2-4 good runs, then the power would die off, but now the car pulls over and over again.


This project took a lot of time and effort, if you dont have the facilities to do it, DON'T DO IT, go with the Kinetic kit.  It would be WAAAAAY less effort

so thats it, feel free to give me feedback, or to tell me I'm stupid for putting it on a 14b, but I did and I'm happy with it

Jovan

[Andrew Scott]

 :laugh:

Now lets get mine in

[Dan Harshey]

Wow Nice,
What was the final cost??
 i like the Audi 5000 IC idea
Nice Job Guys
Dan

[Jovan Ceklaj]

I dont know about Andrew, but I'd be more then happy to help people out with advice and pipe making and even installing, but Vlad, if you want one, you better believe you're not just sitting there watching me work :laugh:

Dan, we had to pull in some MAJOR favours to get the prices we did, and we were told by some of those that helped not to advertise what we paid for, but suffice it to say, it was "slightly" below $1k each

Jovan

[John Hartman]

still a grand!!

Holy!

Nice cores tho for sure and well made end tanks.  Plus the Kinetic piping rock as usual.

[Jovan Ceklaj]

er...maybe I wasn't clear about it.  I made the pipes myself(except the j pipe, but you're right, it does rock), and the whole thing was "slightly" (translation - a bunch less, but I'm not saying) less than a grand.  

sorry for the confusion John

Jovan

[Kimyee Lai]

Moral of the story?  Once you get into custom endtanks, you will quickly be looking at big bucks.  

I still think that a supra SMIC with custom endtanks would be a relatively low-cost/high gain alternative.  But really good job guys.  Who needs a kit when there's people like you?

I agree with John, Kinetic piping rocks!  They have a nice rolled bead to prevent coupling blowoffs, and the smooth SS pipe gives a great bling factor with only very little polishing.  

[John Hartman]

I've been tossing that idea around for a bit.  Even brought it up at my first bbq with Troy et all.

Supra Sidemount as a front mount, hmmmm

[Andrew Scott]

Well, we put mine on the other day:


In progress, it isn't really as crooked as it looks..


The piping


Final result

[Andrew Scott]

Final thoughts: HOLY CRAP! Huge difference!

When it was raning, I was losing 4 wheel traction at the top of second and third gear!

Unfortunately I started hitting some serious fuel cut at 15 pounds, but basically no knocking. This will all be solved with some bigger injectors.