homemade dual intercooler

OK just recently i got a 91 tsi for parts but it didnt have a motor...it did have an intercooler though... my plan was to take that intercooler and get the one in my 92 tsi and have them welded together to make one intercooler. i plan on mounting them in from of the radiator...does anyone know if this will work or even fit? has anyone heard about someone doing this before?

are you talking about welding the two end tank tubes together? if so there won't be very good air flow (if it will even work). I have never head of anyone trying this??? i dont know why you would want to either?

I seen two sidemounts cut and welded together to make a front mount. It did work and the guy was selling them on ebay for a good price. If you have the tools and the skills you can do it.

If youre not talking about ITBs, twin intercoolers make even less sense. It would be more of a problem than theyre worth, and I would assume they would flow less air than a large FMIC.

i was thinkin of welding the out tude of one side mount to the in tube of another to make a dual intercooler....im not sure it it will work at all or even fit but im gonna try....maybe

If you want to do that for the heck of it just to be different, thumbs up! But the added piping and two intercooler increases the complexity of airflow instead of making it simpler, so don't base your judgement on doing this if youre looking to see great gains. But go for it and post pics when your done :bigthumb:

do you think that this will help enough to worry about as far as power or should i just leave it alone so i dont have to go through the trouble of mounting and running pipes?

It depends on what setup youre running and your power levels. I would just get a good bar and plate core, and custom make some piping for it. You will see much more power than the hybrid dual-IC setup youre thinking about.

its not really worth it. you can sell the 2 sidemounts and get one big front mount instead of the two small ones together.

its not really worth it. you can sell the 2 sidemounts and get one big front mount instead of the two small ones together.


I agree with 03trd! But if it sounds like a challange and you don't mind scraping the parts if it doesn't work, go for it.

Dejon tool (.com) has been making these for years, but I think they used 3 SMIC cores. They also sell a dual SMIC setup, run in parallel. Running two in series would be worthless, I think I posted the reasons with some theory a couple years ago.

IF you already have the two cores and the welding is free, its worth it, anything has to be better than the stock SMIC location. But it will still be less effective than a purpose built FMIC.