This site contains car modification and auto upgrade information specifically for the turbo import Toyota JZX90 MarkII TourerV, however the principles applied here can be mostly utilised regardless of the make or model of motor vehicle.
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Hybrid FMIC Install 2/6/2005
Hybrid don't make an intercooler kit for the JZX90 so my choice was to use either the JZA80 Supra kit or the JZZ30 Soarer kit. Under suggestion by the Hybrid staff, I decided to utilise the JZA80 Supra kit with the hope that it would not require too much modification.
When the kit arrived at about 6pm I had the decision to make: fit it now or do it tommorrow. Well there is nothing like the present when you are excited about a new purchase so I decided to utilise this energy of this excitement and transform it into the labour required to fit the intercooler to my car. As it would turn out, it would be a long night (and morning).
The first thing to do is remove the front bar. The front bar is held on by 3 very obvious fasteners on top and some other not so obvious fasterners in other positions. One of these positions is behind the indicators and the other is behind the inner guard. Once the bar is removed there are anumber of items that are also removed permanantly. Shown here in this picture are the items that are not used once the new FMIC is installed. These include the stock intercooler, the hard pipes, hoses and clamps, front collision bar, front bar polystyrene insert, and some brackets.
As you can see from the picture here, the standard intercooler is very thick. I would love a full size front mount intercooler with this sort of thickness, however it would not even fit behind the front bar. The stock intercooler is therefore very effective, and added with the scoop to capture more airflow when moving, it does a reasonable job. It does however have a great deal less frontal area and a slightly larger pressure drop than a good flowing FMIC. Anyone want a stock 1JZ intercooler going cheap?
The next step is to determine a mounting position for the intercooler core. This was going to be a lot of trial an error, as the kit was obviously designed for a different model car. I didn't even know if any of the piping would line up so I decided to mount the cooler in the most central position, as high as I could manage. This proved to be the first great difficulty. Since I already had an oil cooler fitted, the core could not be installed any higher than the point where the oil cooler hoses exited.
I had to remove the support bracket that joins the bonnet catch to the lower part of the front apron. This was the first impediment. In order to restore rigidity to the bonnet catch (and allow the bonnet to actually close), I re-used one of the intercooler brackets to add support as shown in the previous picture.
Also wherever I tried to place the core, it would interfere with either the power steering cooler lines, or the airconditioning lines. The solution was to carefully bend them into position where they no longer were a nuisance. The power steering cooler was bent backwards towards the air-conditioning core (as indicated in this photo).
The first photo here shows where one of the horns had to be relocated. This was actually relocated when the oil cooler was installed (which can be seen to the right of the shot).
The second photo shows how the air-con and powersteering lines were bent upwards to ensure they were out of the way. The second horn as seen here does not interfere so can be left where it is. The lines had to be manipulated a couple of times as there is very little clearance for them behind the headlight and initially there was interference. It is important not to bend the lines too much as they are a rather soft and ductile metal. This makes them easy to bend, but also easy to damage if handled with a ham-fisted approach. Also bending them back and forwards while adjusting their position is something to aviod as the metal "work hardens" and become stiffer to bend, more brittle, and more likely crack.
Two holes were then drilled into the front most support panel and the intercooler core then fitted and bolted in. It is very easy to say this, however in practice it proved to be a very frustrating procedure. Patience wins out in the end though, and the core is finally in position. The next step is to begin installing the piping on the inlet side of the intercooler
Now at this point it became clear that the pipes from the turbo to the cooler core were less than ideal. Firstly the pipe from the outlet of the turbos point in a different direction on the 2JZ compared to the 1JZ (perhaps this part of the kit would have been better from the Soarer kit). Also, the stock airbox makes it impossible to fit. This however was expected and I decided to use the stock piping to maintain legality until a single turbo went in.
Mating the stock outlet pipe to the lower pipe on the kit proved to be a little difficult. After some manipulation and appropriate twisting of pipes I managed to get them to line up and effectively join sufficiently well. The lower pipe from the kit would also (I later found out) foul with the stock front bar. Utilising the better quality clamps from the kit meant that at least the pipes were not going to blow off, even if their junctions were a bit strained by the manipulated pipes.
The stock piping used included the silicone hose from the turbo outlet, a short section of hard pipe (plastic) in the inneer guard, and a black silicone joiner that can be seen in this shot. With the stock IC removed there is a lot of space, and this is typically where an oil cooler is placed.
If I keep the auto transmission for much longer this would be a good position to place a transmission cooler, or I could participate in the quirky Japanese fad of a secondary water cooler. You can see here where the front bar mounting point actually fouls with the IC piping, and also the rivets that I used to re-attach the stock IC scoop when it incoveniently dislodged at an "off" during a drift meet. Another item that was relocated was what I assume is some sort of air sensor (speed or temperature I don't know). It is the small black device above the intercooler piping in the second shot. This normally resides where the FMIC currently is just below the oil cooler position.
With the inlet side of the intercooler attached, the outlet side of the intercooler in now dealt with. Upon attempting to fit the pipe to the inlet manifold, I discovered that there is obviously a lot more room in front of the 2JZ engine in the Supra. Although the angle of the manifolds are about the same, the location of the radiator hose is not. The radiator hose is partially displaced once the piping is in place, and this will probably add a little bit of heat to the intake charge air. Added to that I discovered that the radiator shroud was very much in the way, as well as the bracket for the hydraulic fan. Since the bracket has 4 mounting points I reasoned that losing one support point would not be disasterous, so I unbolted and bent one of the brackets out of the way.
I then had to trim down the radiator shroud to remove this point of interference. Using a stanley knife I trimmed bit by bit, some plastic from the offending area. Eventually I had created enough space to comfortably fit the new pipe. However the water bottle (which was removed to fit the pipe) would now not go back into its original position. It was fitted in a modified position somewhere near 50mm higher.
The final piece in this intercooler puzzle is the U-shaped section of pipe connecting back to the outlet of the intercooler core. This piece of pipe goes around the front most extremity of left side of the chassis rail. However in this location is a rather incoveniently placed (for our purposes at least) washer bottle for the front windscreen.. Flexing this out of the way is not too much of a problem, except for the carbon canister that sits behind it and refuses to budge. At this later point in time I can't recall exactly how I overcame this (probably the fact that it was now about 4am contributed to my loss of memory) but suffice to say I bent , maniupulated or otherwise relocated these items to finally allow me to complete the circuit of piping.
When re-attaching the lower plastic tray, I realised that it was not going to bolt up to its original position. At this time in the piece I was not surprised and found that I was exceedingly happy to locate it with a zip tie. Clarity sometimes comes in the early hours of the morning I have discovered!
So with all the parts in position I am able to step back and survey my handiwork ..... only to discover that the cooler is not sitting straight!!!
Well after rounding out one of the mounting holes I was able to adjust the core to a more balanced position which I considered to be necessary for a nice fitment of the front bar.
Now came the time to attempt to fit the front bar back onto the car. I predicted that the bar would need a slight "filing" shall we say, however upon sitting the stock bar in front of the car I realised that some major adjustments would be necessary.
At this point I remembered that the spare bar that I had (off the wrecked '93 model JZX90 I bought) was different to my bar.
A quick inspection revealed that the '93 bar (10/93-6/94 from memory) had less dimension to it and perhaps promised an easier fit. This proved to be the case, and with a bit of flexing and a moderate amount of grunting, I managed to fit the earlier model bar onto the car with no modifications whatsoever. Success!!
There were some points of contact with the cooler piping in a couple of spots but nothing to raise any concern over.
After stepping back and realising that the intercooler was still exposed underneath the front bar, I fitted the lower lip spoiler (also from the spare car) and managed to conceal the cooler completely albiet for the hint of shininess behind the black aluminium mesh.
I decided that this would suffice until the bodykit arrived when I expected to make some slight modifications to the aftermarket front bar in order to make a neat fit.
Overall it took about 10 hours to fit (including about 2 hours of dozing on the concrete floor of the garage), so I guess about 8 hours in total. The extended length of time was due to the fact that there was so much modification to be done before it would fit. I naiively expected to be finished by about 1am, but there are many setbacks when modifying a kit to fit a car other than the one it is designed for.
Should there be anyone out there planning a Supra Hybrid Intercooler install on a JZX90 (anyone .... anyone ....) then you will know exactly what to do now. Well I suspect at least that there are some similarilties when fitting an intercooler kit to many other cars so my experience may not be totally lost in the realms of improbable obscurity.
So here is a parting shot of the end result to finish with.
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RECENT MODS CHRONOLOGY
5-Jan-2007
Turbo pages and Headlights
I have recently added a new page about my single turbo conversion. There is a second page yet to come, but page one outlines some of the supporting components needed as well as the turbo itself.
Page 2 will be forthcoming where I detail the fitment of the turbo, manifold and wastegate.
I have also added a page for modifications to my headlights that should be very useful for owners of import vehicles.
25-Jan-2007
Site Revamp
Wow, it has been a very long time since I worked on the site, but now I
am in the process of redesigning it so stay tuned as I add some more content
and attempt to bring this project up to date.
18-Mar-2006
Car Changes
Lots has happened since my last update on upgrades to the car. For instance
the car is now running a 2JZ bottom end and the gearbox has been completely
rebuilt with a stage 1.5 shift kit, beefier clutches and a 2800 rpm stall convertor.
To say that this has transformed the car is an understatement. The car is now
torque heaven, and is an absolute pleasure to drive. The lag that was sadly
felt with the 2.5L motor is now completely gone with the 3L and the stally.
When I can find time to update the site with the process I went through I will
do so. I have many hundreds of pictures to add.
Whatever your vehicle is, whether it is a turbo car or NA or a Toyota or other manufacturer, I hope that the automotive information on this page is of benefit to you as you take the path of modification and upgrade on your car.
Toyota JZX90 MarkII TourerV.