torga
Autocross Champion
To be honest, I was sloppy reinstalling my front end and rushed the process and when I put the front clip on, I managed to shove it on in a way that had my radiator and fan shroud pressed up against the charge pipe prior to putting in the two bolts that hold the condenser/intercooler/radiator unit in it’s proper place. I also didn’t get the tabs on the bottom lines up in there slots before pressing the front clip towards the car. I would suggest having a friend help to you when reinstalling it so you can line up the tabs on the bottom of the intercooler that slide into the two slots on the bottom of the front clip that also hold the condenser/intercooler/radiator unit in its place and then pull everything towards you to slide the little mounting bushing that sit on the upper side of the IC or the IC delete into the designated area on the front clip.
After doing it several times without draining the coolant, draining the coolant would be wise, especially if doing it alone because it makes moving around all of your cooling system components 100x easier than when your rad is full of coolant and wants to just fall straight down when you’re putting the front clip on.
It was my fault at the end of the day for trying to remove my FMIC and put the stock one back in and have my front end back on within a couple of hours and thought I could get away with being a bit careless by shoving things on when you need to be delicate especially if you don’t drain the coolant. What happened to me isn’t something that needs to be cautious of, I was just being ignorant about the process. I’ve done it about four other times, but took my time doing it and never had issues.
Draining the coolant isn’t really necessary but if you don’t have a friend or some type of contraption to hold up the cooling components in their place relative to where they mount on the front end while your removing and installing everything, save yourself the struggle and drain the coolant.
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Hey, thanks for those tips! I think I'll drain the coolant because I've been meaning to anyway. I need to replace a hard coolant pipe (bolts to the intake manifold) because I'm getting a very slow leak from it. I believe there's a hairline crack that's letting a teeny bit of coolant seep out when the engine bay is up to temp.
So, I can drain the coolant and not worry about making a mess of replacing that hard pipe, and have an easier time of a FMIC while I'm at it!