The intercooler piping that I got looked very much like it was for a Hahn same-side setup, so it wasn’t going to work out of the box. I went ahead and cut it up and used some Aluma-Weld to put it back together so that I now have the hot side pipe dropping straight down, going between the oil pan and the transmission, and then crossing in front of the engine to the intercooler. The other side remains the steel exhaust pipe for now. To complete the piping, I needed to add a 2.5″-2″ reducer coupler for the turbo outlet, but the hot side pipe is completely constructed with aluminum pipe, silicone couplers, and t-bolt clamps.
In the process of doing that I pulled the wire out of the connector for the intake air temp sensor. I couldn’t find another connector like that in my wiring supply anywhere, so I decided to go to Rock Auto and for about $20 get the actual pigtail that fits the connector. When that comes in, I’ll wire it up and should no longer have any problems with that sensor coming loose on me again.
Speaking of wiring, I bought an 8-position barrier strip with an 8-position jumper strip from Radio Shack for about $5. I took the MegaSquirt grounds apart, and replaced all the terminals with smaller round ones. Now the strip is mounted on the side of the dash with a central ground, and each of the 8 MS ground wires attached. This should prevent any more grounding issues. I also took the opportunity to tuck up the MS wires a bit more.
Another problem that I discovered was that the coolant lines to the turbo were leaking a bit, and all the fiddling that I did back there in replacing the pipes made the situation much worse. I could just tighten everything up, but I dropped about $100 on some AN plumbing to re-do the water feed for the turbo. This will allow me to clean up the heater core plumbing. The water feed should come off of the heater core into a 90 and then shoot directly to the top of the turbo. Then, the coolant return should come back to the coolant hard line, go straight into the existing heater hose, through the MS CLT sensor, and then back to the block. This will shorten up the coolant lines significantly, stop the leaks, improve the flow, and reduce the amount of congestion over in that area.
It’s not installed yet, but I also built a new coolant reservoir out of PVC and pipe fittings. It’s J-shaped and should fit nicely behind the bumper cover. In the meantime, I bolted the stock overflow bottle to the firewall along with the catch can.
I still am not sure how to address the crankcase ventilation, so for now, I’m going to leave it open.