intercooler Y pipe
 

Hi, i have a standard (My00) uk turbo intercooler, im going to strip it down and clean it and refit with a Samco or prodrive hard Y pipe.
I take it i will need new gaskets where the alloy pipe joins the intercooler and for the recirc valve? if so does anyone know the part numbers and rough price?
Also whats the best stuff to clean the inside of intercooler?

:thumb:

anyone?

can anyone help :confused:

You should be able to leave the two end tank adapters on (no need to remove them) so you won't need gaskets there, and same with the dump valve. Pull the vacuum pipe off and recirc pipe off and no need to remove it. Cleaned mine by swilling white spirit around in it. If you want to clean the valve you can use brush and spirit through the hole where the recirc pipe went on whilst sucking on the vacuum pipe to help you move the valve open slightly. No real need to replace any gaskets and saves me a 45 mile trip to Subaru.

Trouble is the Prodrive Y pipe is alloy and replaces the standard end tank adapters so i will need new gaskets, recirc valve should be ok though

Flush my I/C through with half a gallon of unleaded.:thumb:

just reuse your existing gaskets on the prodrive Y pipe. and fit a newage wrx intercooler or STI item (if your flush)

So the prodrive pipe for my classic will fit onto a newage WRX intercooler? I will see what sort of money they go for as may aswell do that whilst its all in bits. This could get expensive :lol1:

It will fit a newage STi intercooler as well for what it's worth. However the WRX ones are much cheaper to get hold of and a noticeable improvement on the MY99-00 standard IC. If you go that route you will need a newage dumpvalve and need to do a bit of surgery on the recirc pipe, possibly coilpack mounting pillars and mounting brackets. Worthwhile though.

Good condition WRX IC and dumpvalve should be yours for less than £40 in the usual places you find such things. Well worth it for that kind of outlay.

To answer your earlier questions there isn't a huge amount of point flushing out your own intercooler on the inside*. The only thing you will find in there will be a small amount of oil from the crankcase ventilation system, which isn't worth worrying about and will instantly start to re-accumulate once you refit it.

If there's an amount built up you can just flush it through with water. Everything loose will wash through and you'll be left with just a thin sheen on the inner surfaces that is neither here nor there.

*=although the exception to that would be buying a secondhand one - which you may be about to do of course.

The most important part of the intercooler to clean are the exterior fins - just spray it through backwards with a hose (not a pressure washer) and watch a couple of hundred dead insects, a manky old bird's feather and some sliced leaves fall out.

As has been said, likelihood is that you will be able to re-use the gaskets that seal the y-pipe to the IC as long as you're reasonably careful removing the old spigots. If you fit a newage intercooler, note that the dumpvalve gasket on those is a slightly different shape to the one on the late classic, so if you buy a new IC and dumpvalve separately you will probably need one of these.