My tortilla wrapped adventure aka my experience with the TacoTaco intercooler

Another possibility I just saw on ebay is an intercooler with a 4 inch core. I have to say, though, not knowing the weight if these units, how are the mounting tabs? Are the tabs really going to be strong enough to hold the units and not bend? If they were steel I wouldn't question but aluminum usually bends pretty easily. With all that being said, I feel more comfortable with a 4 inch core, not to mention you can replace the 4 inch core alot easier as you can just buy the core if you wanted to. Just food for thought.

I picked up my pipe from the welder today and it was not good.
It was so bad I am not even going to put pictures up.
He has been the best welder I have ever found I just don't think he understood what I was asking for.
When I got home I ground off the welding he did, and then had a great idea (thanks to my girlfriend).
I heated the pipe up until it was red hot using a torch, about 1/5 to 1/6 of the diameter at a time and used my homemade "bead roller" tool. It worked nicely. Just a word of advice: with14 gauge stainless is extremely hard to put a bead on compared to 1/8 aluminum or mild steel exhaust pipe.

Here is the end result. It is not pretty, but much prettier than what the welder did, and it should work:

Good job,

And the girlfriend may be a keeper!

3turboz said:

Good job,

And the girlfriend may be a keeper!

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Her comment was: "to bad is not like butter, you know, the warmer it is the softer it is"
I kinda felt like an idiot for not thinking of it myself.
It was still harder to put a bead on, even when it was hot, compared to aluminum or mild steel. All it took was a torch, a little more time, and a little more work.

....I kinda wanna see pictures of the welding job, lol.

Good job being creative. I think that's what sets up dieselers apart from the rest!

That's awesome! I like seeing creative stuff like that. Also, does she have sisters?

Joester, could you post a pic of the piping and coupling where the headlight is?

I'm having trouble with my tacotaco and would like to see how yours fits

wakdady said:

Joester, could you post a pic of the piping and coupling where the headlight is?
I'm having trouble with my tacotaco and would like to see how yours fits

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Unfortunately I dont have any pictures of that.

I put spacers underneath the two tabs (between the upper mounting tabs and the body of the car) to raise it up a bit and then also had to notch a bit out of the fiberglass headlight/radiator support to get it to fit without rubbing or vibrating on anything. It was definitely an ordeal for me and to make things worse, it seems like they arent all the same. Some peoples TacoTacos fit right on, other like you and me need some fab work and spacers.

You definitely need to make sure the outlet of the new SMIC is as close to possible to the position of the stocker. With my Boostfactory SMIC, I had to trim the fibreglass rad support quite a bit in order to get things lined up.

The outlet on my taco taco ended up right where the factory one was, my problem was the upper ic pipe I was trying to use. The factory one would have worked if it was 3 inches longer and the EGR end was 2.25" od.

I have finally decided to give up on my Taco Taco intercooler
While it bolted right up to the three mounting bolts, it is sticking out 1.5 to 2 inches too far on the passenger side to put the bumper cover back on.

I had already purchased a 3 bar map that was the smaller diameter probe to fit the new intercooler, my factory intercooler has the larger diameter probe. I know there is an adapter to make the smaller probe work in the larger diameter hole. Does anyone know where I can find this?

Damn there must be a hell of an issue with QC on these things. Mine bolted up on my '03 Jetta without any of that sort of nonsense. The bumper cover doesn't have any material amount of clearance, but it doesn't interfere -- it did go back on cleanly.

My TacoTaco had the same issue (2002 Golf) in that the bumper cover wouldn't go back on.

A few minutes with a dremel tool to make a little cut-out in the ledge formed at the junction of the cover and lower valance, and problem solved.

Nuje said:

My TacoTaco had the same issue (2002 Golf) in that the bumper cover wouldn't go back on.

A few minutes with a dremel tool to make a little cut-out in the ledge formed at the junction of the cover and lower valance, and problem solved.

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I saw that same problem and trimmed it the same way. Then the front upper outside corner of the ic was hitting on the center of the right corner of the bumper cover. Nothing to trim there so I decided to just go back to the stock ic. I would probably go with a fmic kit if I had to do it over. If there are heat soak issues with the stock smic I will go the fmic route later.

Nuje said:

My TacoTaco had the same issue (2002 Golf) in that the bumper cover wouldn't go back on.

A few minutes with a dremel tool to make a little cut-out in the ledge formed at the junction of the cover and lower valance, and problem solved.

Click to expand...

I see a lot of people talking about fitment issues with a non stock larger intercooler. I purchased the expensive EuroJet SMIC and still had all the same issues that everyone else is having with a cheap TacoTaco SMIC. They are nearly all the same.

Just as Nuje stated, all I needed to do to get my EuroJet to fit was trim the core support in a couple areas, and trim down the air duct to the IC, and then it was able to fit basically without issue. I have been running it on my 2003 Jetta since.

Though, I will note (not sure if it was previously mentioned) that Golf and Jetta bumpers are different. So I cannot say to how it will work Golf vs. Jetta. This is all just my $.02 on the matter.

Fitment issues aside, do we have access to before & after dyno results?

Votblindub said:

Fitment issues aside, do we have access to before & after dyno results?

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^That, But to a point. It has to fit correctly for proper air flow.

I'm sure this has been said before, but I'd say it is more of a consistency thing than a fit meant thing.

I've owned 2, first one fit PERFECT, the second was a chore. I installed a third for a friend that fit, but wasn't fun.

I'd call it a modest but noticeable gain. If your pulling the stock IC for some reason and are interested in IAT's being lower I'd say this is a worthwhile buy. Do be ready for some mods, if you have a step drill, longer bolts, and a large stack of washers you can make it happen. Having a welder available is useful though.

I just bought an A4 1.8t FMIC kit for adapting in my A6 TDI. How's the quality of the cores themselves seem?

I think mine is due in tomorrow.

Votblindub said:

Fitment issues aside, do we have access to before & after dyno results?

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Tyrolsport has some good comparisons for their SMIC (which is a work of art, but $$$) on their site. Click links on this page : http://www.tyrolsport.com/mk4tdiintercooler

i'll say it again. slowly... an "upgraded" smic is usually a lot more hassle/$$ than it is worth than to simply do a proper fmic in an mk4. which means getting a pd130 driver-side intake manifold and do a shorter simpler loop. you can do it yourself if you can get someone to weld a map sensor bung into a pipe

There aren't any turbulators in the fmic I got. Do the smic have them?

While they do increase pressure drop, they also improve heat transfer.