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I was installing an ECS cold air intake and noticed the drivers side of the factory intercooler seems to be covered by a rubber covering. About a 1/3 of the intercooler seems to be blocked. This seems counter intuitive to charge air cooling. Has anyone else noticed this?
Mine came off when the bumper did. The fact that it blocked a nice chunk of the Intercooler from the front end when looking straight on really threw off my eye's sense of balance. Buh bye.
Mine came off when the bumper did. The fact that it blocked a nice chunk of the Intercooler from the front end when looking straight on really threw off my eye's sense of balance. Buh bye.
does it not go around the core fully? Was it easy to take off?
What I don't get is the point of something that deliberately reduces cooling of charge air.
It's one thing to leave around code for lane minding or traffic sign recognition inactive in lower trim models: that costs you pretty much nothing in production. But it's another to add a piece that is real money and time when physically making a car.
If it's to make every engine configuration use the same size intercooler, fine, but I still don't see why you have to blank part of it off.
does it not go around the core fully? Was it easy to take off?
It’s annoying to be honest. Made of pretty rigid plastic and didn’t love the idea of flexing too much. Just remember it is basically three sided (Front, top, bottom). On the top and bottom there are clip edges that need to be in-clipped. I thought I took a pic before putting it in the storage unit for the exact purpose of sharing but I can’t find it on my phone. Next time I’m over there I will grab a pic of the piece so everyone has an idea of where to pull. It’s pretty straightforward though. Bumper likely needs to be off the car though so I recommend doing it in tandem with any work that requires bumper removal. Mine was done when I had the frontgrill on my Allroad painted for example. You can see it’s gone in the below pic. Ahhhhhh...balance.
Last edited by Fantasiamon; 02-18-2018 at 11:29 AM.
What I don't get is the point of something that deliberately reduces cooling of charge air.
It's one thing to leave around code for lane minding or traffic sign recognition inactive in lower trim models: that costs you pretty much nothing in production. But it's another to add a piece that is real money and time when physically making a car.
If it's to make every engine configuration use the same size intercooler, fine, but I still don't see why you have to blank part of it off.
I asked someone in the know and they mentioned it was basically a “snow cover”. Still doesn’t make sense to me either.
Maybe it’s a way of meeting emissions standards or something? I don’t know. I would be curious to see if European model pix have the piece visible.
EU-spec don't have this cover I'm pretty sure. It probably has to do with following some American law which always seem to take something away from the car or make it look uglier. :/
02-17-2018, 09:42 AM
Factory intercooler question
