As mentioned in Superspats thread, I had notice on my girlfriends car a fair bit of crud/oil on the seals and pipes around the intercooler. He told me its a sign of a failing turbo to get oil in the intercooler so me being me I had to take it apart and investigate. This week the girlfriend went on holiday so thought now was a good a time as any. I took a few pictures as I went along, basically I found that there was minimal oil in the intercooler, what little was there was basically down to normal operation so all the gunk near the pipes would have been from a previous turbo failure or just lack of cleaning. I used Gunk degreaser and plenty of rags/wipes and water. Mixed some gunk and water solution into the intercooler, blocked the inlet and outlet holes with rags and my hands and shook the intercooler like I was Tom Cruise in Cocktail..that helped get rid of any oil residue and I made sure it was bone dry before putting it back together. While I was there I have removed the stupidly restrictive airbox and I have decided to make my own, a 90 degree air intake hose and cheap ebay cone air filter with cable ties should do her for now - what can I say I'm on a budget? I'm just waiting for the 90 degree intake to arrive, and will update this thread once I fit it. So this is what greeted me when I took the top pipework off: You can see the crud at the top of the intercooler and inside, the intercooler matrix has some light misting of oil. I couldn't get the right side of the bumper off due to the screws attaching it to the wing being chewed up, which made things a little bit trickier but it was a nice day so I just took my time. Took the airbox off at this point, plenty of room to install the induction kit. Intercooler off and turbo inlet pipe too, easier to pull the pipe from turbo end rather than the remove the two bolts for the pipe in situ Cleaned up the intercooler and the associated pipework - filthy rag on grass I/C and pipes back on..hopefully the cleanup of the IC will make it slightly more efficient. With the pipework being clean and oil free I will keep an eye on the pipework also to see if they oil up again.
Not sure why some photos have come out wonky even though I rotated them when I uploaded them? Ah well I hope you get the jist.
Yeah, sprayed gunk on the outside fins also, left it to settle, then ran a hose at low pressure over it. Some crud came off that way, not much.
some good work there. It looks like its never been removed, that looks like a general build up of grime, and thousands of miles of oil vapor that naturally build up on standard cars due to the rocker cover breather being plumbed in to the inlet
Decided against fitting a homebrew induction in the end, partly because I ordered the wrong size pipe plus I'd probably have to cable tie it to secure it which is a bit too heath robinson for me. What I did do was borrow a trick from the MX5 world and drill holes in the standard airbox to allow slightly more air to be sucked into the filter, I'm also going to keep an eye out for a d-sport filter or cheap induction kit (fat chance) Thanks superspat good to see that its just road grime and normal oil vapour and that my OH's turbo is ok ( touch wood)
you could open up the size of the inlet to the filter as its smaller compared to the D-sport one. I bet besides that there is not much difference. So get the dremel or angle grinder out.
Got neither a dremel or an angle grinder so had to settle for the drill holes for now. It's her car anyway, if it was mine I'd have bought out most of Japan's Copen aftermarket stock. It's been serviced for her and sorted for when shes back anyway. I am sure she will appreciate the fact I've sorted it and covered myself in sweat and oil
Hi seany, My induction filter is for sale have a look at the thread below. If your intrested let me know https://www.copenworld.com/vb3/showthread.php?t=2584
