I finally got around to installing my new intercooler. I bought it in July and its been sitting in the garage torturing me since then.
Here it is behind the grill. I positioned it so it was as high as possible without being blocked by the upper black plastic support behind the chrome insert. This is so that some fresh air can flow under it direct to the radiator/trans cooler. You can also see I trimmed some of the plastic in the center to open up flow to the core.
Here is how I mounted the top. Its a piece of 1x1" angle iron which is bolted along the width of the radiator support. It took a hammer and some persuasion to flatten out the front of the rad support to line up with the angle iron. I drilled out the rivets on the vertical support/hood latch in the center and put in spacers to move the support forward and open up some extra space because the way the IC piping had to be run required the intercooler sit farther forward than I would have liked. Spacing the support forward allows the Intercooler to sit almost vertical. One issue this created was interference of the support/hood latch with the bottom side of the hood so that it wont fully close. It clicks into the safety latch, but doesnt full engage, so I am going to drill two new holes lower down and chop off an inch or two. Also notice that I pushed the AC Condenser back against the radiator. I did this by just pushing it back and working some of the hard pipes which bend pretty easily. the tabs on the condenser slide into the mounts on the lower radiator.
And I reused the Mishimoto CAC hoses, at least temporarily. I used 2" and 2.5" exhaust pipe to connect the mishimoto hoses to the elbows on the intercooler. On the drivers side I had to flip the CAC hose to get a better angle. It runs partially under the Sasquatch battery tray. Ultimately I will try to weld up my own rigid hoses out of exhaust piping. I may reduce both sides to 2" lines to cut down on internal volume of the intake system. Believe it or not, but our jeeps arnt that powerful and dont flow a lot of air so 2" is perfectly adequate for the whooping 200hp.
Passenger Side:
Drivers Side Connection:
Drivers side under battery tray
So far so good. One thing I had noticed with the stock CAC, which continues to occur with this one, is that it seems the IAT sensor gets heat soaked and i think its related to the coolant temp. My IAT will settle at around 85F even if I am coasting down a mountain at 60 mph with no throttle or boost on a freezing cold day. The difference is that with the OLD CAC is as soon as I am back on the throttle making boost, the temps would good up very quickly and would routinely get up to 170F+ on hills in a matter of 15-20 seconds.
It was a high of 25 degrees today so its not exactly a good test of the performance, but I couldnt get the thing to budge much over the 85F IAT that the jeep likes to sit at. Even long pulls at 15-20 psi resulted in almost no change. It would go up if I was in stop and go in town(high throttle spurts + low speeds), since air flow was limited(i am currently running an electric fan).
I will bring it over to one of the big hills around here tomorrow and see how hot it gets.