Best Way To Make The Stock Intercooler Shine!

[J3TXR6]

Hey all,

Not planning to do any mods to my car but I want to make my stock cooler shine!!!!!! now I want to know the best way to make it shine nicely...where one is better and how easy/hard is it?

- spray it silver

OR

- polish it

also do I have to do any sanding or use and air gun on it?

cheers

[NFORCD]

No need for sanding at all mate, just get something like degreaser even and wipe it off or the other ones that just evaporate. Its best to clean it so it looks better and you dont spray over the bits n pieces stuck to it.

Whereas with spraying it you have to options;

1. Spray it silver which would look the same as every other IC or same as the F6 IC.

2. I know repco has them (not sure of other places), but you can spray it chrome finish which would look similair to the aftermarket chrome IC.

[jasol]

if your going to the trouble of takeing it off id polish it, I even seen a guy on here lower the stock cooler looked much better/bigger and would have worked better too. dont get the spray chrome it just looks cheap IMO

[XR6Turbz]

if you want to paint/polish it. few options here.

Pull if off, take it to a panel beater/painter who has a dipping service for chroming, they will make it shine for u

other option is to sandblast it from the stock black color (or whatever color it is) and get it resprayed whatever color you want.

Or you could not even waste your time/money and just get an after market one man, the amount of hours, driving and time u will waste doing this is beyond my understanding. IMO save your money dude and buy Either one of the following IC's.... HDI, MONZA, NIZPRO or any other one that will fit.

good luck in your decision.

[jasol]

I deffintly would not do the first 2 things heres why

chromeing an intercooler will glog it up majorly making it even more insuficiant, its advised not even to powdercoat the core as that's to thick too

sandblasting will just f*ck it way to powerfull and harsh for an intercooler core

[fordfreak XRT07]

spray light coats of chrome paint onto it.. careful not to do too thick over the core fins.. or could just buy a direct bolt in replacement in the "monza-cooler"..

[xr6turboman]

You guys seem to be missing the point... If you buy an aftermarket one... yea well and good but firstly you have to get a tune cost of intercooler + flash box + tune = and this little mod is starting to look up around the $1200-1500 mark... and if its manual double it...

On my old BA I just pulled it off cleaned it best I can and sprayed 2 or 3 light coats of chrome over it... looked really good and had no problem with cooling

[Redback]

The only way to make it look treat and done properly is as follows:

You need to remove the intercooler and have the rough casted end tanks sanded back smoothly. There are a number of bits for use on drills etc. But basically you start with a rough grade and work your way down to a smooth finish. When your done sanding you need to buff the sanded end tanks up to a mirror finish. This can be done with a buffing wheel on a bench grinder and then finished off with a loose flap wheel and polish. Once the end tanks look like a mirror, you mask the end tanks and spray the core with a sliver paint. This is how the intercooler places achive a polished cooler look.

You can forget about chroming as you first have to nikel plate aluminium before chroming and the fins would also look like sh?t, not to mention that you would probably turn the intercooler into a thermoflask where it would retain heat as oppossed to dispersing it.

Mate if you're only interested in looks it would be less work if you just bought a monza for a couple of hundred bucks.

[xr6turboman]

Do you not have to get a tune if you put a monza on??

[Redback]

Mate there are heaps of guys on hear that are running a Monza without a tune. I would best leave it to a tuner to respond as to if it needs a tune or not? I know they flow a bit better but I don't know how much tolerence for compensations the factory tune has?