Thought I'd provide a thread about how I installed my intercooler on my '70 Nova. I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but I figured I'd share my experience. I'll try and explain everything the best I can. So here we go! First off, I installed a Treadstone TVR25-O vertical flow intercooler. This intercooler is rated up to 1,000 hp and is priced around $450 new.

This is a 3.5 inch core with 3 inch inlet and outlet. After the removal of bumper, grill, hood latch/support, I was able to put the intercooler against the core support and figure out where I was going to mount it.

The intercooler fits quite nicely in the opening for the radiator. Some choose to mount the intercooler a little lower down in order to keep the hood latch, however, this would require some major mods to the bottom of the core support which I wasn't really interested in doing and my car already has hood pins in it. After the location, both vertically and horizontally was figured out, it was time to see what was going to have to be cut from the core support in order for the couplers to be connected to the cold side. At the bottom, the vary far right (passenger) lower corner had to be removed and also a bit of the framing structure. It may be a little hard to see in the picture, but I'll try and point it out. Removing this lower corner allowed the cold side piping to be tucked under the bumper tighter and not hang way down. Also, this is possible because I have a slightly narrower radiator than some. If the radiator were stock width, the right side tank would be sitting on the part of the core support that I previously mentioned I removed.

You can see here the outline in red is what was trimmed to fit. The dotted line in yellow depicts the lower section that was cut off. You can see how this allows the cold side pipe to fit nicely up there. Some could also just put a 90 on the intercooler through the core support, but the location of my turbo wouldn't allow that to work, although I wish it would've. After temporarily mounting the intercooler, I was able to find a flat head carriage type bolt at my local big box store (Menards). This allowed me to mount the intercooler and not have the bolts interfere with the radiator tanks.

After having mounted the intercooler, it was time to see what would have to be done to the grill and filler panel. I don't have any pics of the filler panel, but for the metal support, I made a mark on it one inch wider than the intercooler and connected those two lines together with a straight line and cut out that portion. For the plastic filler, only a small section at the corner of the intercooler core had to be modified/cut out. You can't even tell it's been modified once it's all back together. Once the intercooler was in, it wouldn't let the grill sit back where it belongs. It was forward by about 1/2 inch and also the top 90 degree coupler wasn't going to fit without some trimming.

Also, the bottom of the grill had to be modified. For this I just marked the grill and cut a section out about 4 inches wide from the mark towards the center of the grill.

This allowed the bottom of the grill to be positioned correctly, well almost. Again, you'll never know it was cut once it's all back together. After trimming the grill and getting it very close, I decided to mount the left side mounting flange (driver's side) of the intercooler on the ENGINE side of the core support. Since the flanges are about 1/8-3/16 thick, this gained me the additional clearance from the grill that I needed. After that I just needed to fab up some cold side piping. I used a 4 inch holesaw to cut the openings for the upper coupler to pass through, as I'm not a fan of using a cutoff wheel and hacking a square hole for a round pipe. Here are a couple photos of the project almost completed. The grill fits around the coupler and the big radius bend fits nicely to the throttle body.



I hope this is helpful to those wanting to put an intercooler in their Nova. I'll try and update this with some pics of the filler panels and after final assembly.

 

cool looking setup and nova . mine ended up being a little more involved with using the hood latch but the same basic idea. . nice clean looking job.

by the look of that 5th pic you didn't get the 12" of snow I got yesterday. lol.

 

Lol. Thanks. Some of the pics were taken a while ago. I wanted I wait until I had enough to post a decent thread. We didn't get 12, but we got about 4 or so.

 

These seem like nice units. Are these totally different than the China units? End tanks are def different but the cores look alike, but they all do.

 

The cores are different than the China stuff from pics ove seen. Also, there's a divider that runs from the inlet to halfway across the core ensuring that the whole core is being used. Nice construction with cast tanks an billet ends for the inlet and outlet.


Plus, I understand the vertical flow coolers are better than horizontal flow. That being said, I was able to use a smaller cooler and leave a little more open radiator. I would assume it would take a much larger Chinese unit to equal the capabilities of the Treadstone.

 

Looks awful familiar.
😊
Nice work!
Ron

 

Pretty sure that's the one I'm running, the 6" core bot the 9"

 

I have used 2 of those in A bodies, work good-I didn't like the divider they put in, not sure how that affects flow one way or another
IC'ers always affect air flow to the rad., so I always try and mount them lower to uncover as much of the rad. as I can, but sometimes they have to go where they can, lol
good write up, thanks

 

Inside each inlet, I noted a big ridge that necked the ID down. So I stuffed a bunch of rags inside and ground that out with my porting tool. Then thoroughly cleaned with the shop vac and flushed with hot water. ****, yes.
As far as effectiveness, I've noted that my buddies cars with cheap China coolers actually do a better job......but theirs are larger.
I don't have any cooling issues. But my radiator is bigger than yours. FWIW, my buddies do both have cooling issues.
Lastly, the Nova bumper covers a lot of the IC.

 

My radiator is an inch or so wider than the factory size. RonSSnova, I know yours is even wider yet. Id say there's about 2 inches of intercooler that'll be hidden by the bumper. I guess that portion will be used as a heat sink. As far as cooling, I'm hoping the tune along with E85 and a good fan I'll be alright. Look at all the f bodies running around with smaller radiators and no grill per se and they make it work. We shall see. I know yenkomike sees no problems cooling his Nova and his intercooler is much larger than mine and covers more of his radiator and he's on premium pump gas.

 

Same unit I am running, very happy with it for the money so far!

 

Good looking car 3window.

 

Thanks. It's coming along.