Hey Satori, did you do your's without taking the bumper off, if so, would you mind a short little write up (maybe just in a pm to me) on how you did it. Here in Utah there's contstruction everywhere, but I don't want the tightly woven screens they show here.

 

Im going out to try this now =) wish me luck

 

Sorry it took me over a month to reply, I didn't notice this until now.

Anyway, no I didn't remove the bumper, that requires taking out rivets and having a rivet gun to reinstall it properly. All I did was remove the plastic covers under the front of the car, took out the intercooler – be careful not to bend the fins on the IC or radiator behind it – and removed the frame holding the wire mesh. I think the top IC bolt has to be removed from the top while the bottom two can be reached from underneath the car. I think I also removed the lower lip from the bumper, can't remember exactly, it was as while back. I remember it was quite a pain to remove the mesh and frame because in addition to a few bolts, there are lots of little push on connectors connected to plastic. I broke a few of the plastic bits trying to remove them carefully. Once I had the mesh out I cut it from the frame and ground down any bits sticking out, attached the new mesh with JB weld, holding it in place with a few vice grips while it cured, and painted everything before reinstalling it. The fitment was pretty much done by using the old mesh as a template, but I didn't take any measurements or anything.

Sorry I can't give more specific steps, like I said I did this quite a while back.

 

Sorry, scratch out that bit about removing the IC. I removed it while I was under there to straighten out as many fins as I could, but you shouldn't have to remove it just to install the mesh. And unlike some others around here, I found it easy to remove the IC without taking off the bumper fascia. I've never been hip on removing the skin when I can avoid it because I fear I'll never get it back on straight enough.

 

Thanks much, we've got some left over screen stuff, I'll see if I can do stuff with that...

 

I woudlnt put that screen on I woudl think it would hurt air flow to the IC! I think the stock grille does a pretty good job with bugs.

When I first put on my new BR Deluxe there were tons of bugs on it within 2 days... I put my new grille (stock) on for last 4 days and there is not ONE bug on my IC??? Oh well, works for me i Guess!

 

Great write up.

I was thinking of protecting the IC from small rocks and bugs too.

 

With restriction on airflow to the intercooler, would it actually "damage" the turbo and the engine? or would it just decrease the performance you get out of the turbo since the air isn't as cool as it can be?

 

The ECU should do a pretty good job of protecting the engine from detonation so damage isn't very likely, but with pulled timing to stave off problems you'll see a performance reduction whenever the engine is getting too much heat in the intake.

I believe the ECU can pull boost too if you are still using the stock boost controller, but it would only do that in a last ditch effort to stop detonation. You should only see that happen if you are either running way too lean or using a low octane fuel.

Of course, most of us are running after market boost controllers so that last resort isn't available on our cars. If a reduction in timing can't quench the detonation, we will see some damage from high intake temps. How much damage you might expect to see as a result of intercooler heat soak is impossible to say, but I have seen an overboosted engine exhibit holes having been melted into the pistons when uncontrollable detonation resulted in preignition.

EDIT: That wasn't meant to scare you. The damage I described was from trying to get too much boost out of too small a turbocharger with a stock fuel system that wouldn't have been able to supply enough fuel for the amount of boost being run anyway. So that was from being both way too lean and way too hot.