Spent the last couple days installing a 944 turbo intercooler into my 356 project car. I had originally intended to use a Buick GS cooler that I had around, but I couldn't make it fit. After doing a little research it seemed like the long but narrow 944 turbo unit would fit in the spot I had available.
I found one on fleabay and sure enough, it was a perfect fit in the available space. For the rear mount I welded a couple of tabs on the trailer hitch cross tube that I had added to mount the radiator and exhaust hangers. The front was a little trickier and required an X-tube stand off from the rear transmission mount, and then it was bolted on with 5/16" rubber isolators.
Front mount
The next trick was to plumb it up. The intercooler is 2-1/2" OD both ends. I bought one of those cheap ($60) aluminum tube and connector kits from ebay. The aluminum tubes of various bends are fine, the silicone sleeves are pretty cheesy though, ya get what ya pay for --
Connecting the itty-bitty VNT15 discharge to the i.c. would be tricky, we only have about a foot distance to cover, but would need to transition from 1-1/2" to 2-1/2" and change direction twice in that space! I could use one of the 90 degree elbows from the kit, but we'd also need a cone and a tight 90 deg 1-1/2" el. The cone I could roll, but what to use for that elbow? It's back once again to the plumbing department for a brass sink drain tube. Pretty thin wall, but probably fine for the pressures we're talking about. So we rolled a cone from 20ga, welded one end to a 2-1/2" tube, the other to a steel sleeve that would fit over the brass tubing.
transition pieces
After sweating the elbow on, we formed a clamping bead and painted it.
finished fitting
For the other end, we fab up a flange to go onto the intake manifold.
intake flange
So we just had a couple of lengths of tube to cut and bead and we're all set. Here's a picture of a tube, and of a Vice-Grip beading tool, like the one Jake (fspGTD) made, works great, a good way to develop your grip strength too!
beading tool
And here it is all done.
Next we plumb the cooling system and do some wiring and then it will be time to start it up!
moT
Topic: 944 intercooler (Read 1797 times)
