Intercooler Placement Of The Week

He’s something that you’ll be seeing more of in the next month of so… Kei trucks! Without giving away too much, I’ll be travelling to an event soon which will give you a good idea of the attraction these mini vehicles have for  more than a few drifters out there (here) in J-land. For now though have a look at the ingenuity that’s gone into cooling the intake charge of this Suzuki Carry.

How can you fit a front mounted intercooler on a car with next to zero front overhang? The answer is: you can’t. Well, not without major reworking of the front bumper and fitting a maze of intercooler piping that is a pain to install at best. So how does one install a much larger intercooler in a Suzuki Carry? Here’s the easy way:

That’s right, forget aesthetics, mount the intercooler out in the open! Apparently “16000-san”, as he likes to be called, didn’t want the hassle of fitting overly long intercooler piping and cutting up the front of his beloved Carry so he  bolted down the intercooler on the deck and attached some simple pipework to the turbo and intake manifold which were already right out in the open. To fit the K6A turbo engine 16000-san had to cut a fairly large hole in the deck so the intake manifold (which is from a Suzuki Wagon R and usually mounted transversely) could sit up high. Obviously air flow would be a problem so 16000-san mounted the intercooler parallel to the sides of the tray and then promptly went down to the local DIY megastore and picked up an exhaust fan duct! With a few cuts taken out of the grille the duct was ready to be fitted and the final product looks as though it could have been bought straight from the Suzuki Sports catalog… OK, maybe not but 16000-san says it works very well!

Images: 16000-san