Can this be cleaned or prevented?

 

Oh crap, worse than mine. What's up with these intercooler leaks? I used shop towels and patience to clean up the goo, the bad news is your intercooler is leaking. Do you have to replace it? I left mine leaking for a year after the discovery and no harm was done but I did replace mine.

Les

 

Wow! That looks horrible. Were you taking them off because you suspected an issue? I recently removed mine and they were clean so I guess my intercooler is not leaking but not sure how someone would tell without removing the manifolds.

Les, no kidding, it seemed at one time we had many rear end failures close together and now the intercoolers.

 

Yeah, that looks pretty bad. You need two things to make sure you never see that again... The first is a new intercooler and the second is a catch can from Needswings.

 

Rudy,
Could my auxiliary water pump be the cause too? I just replaced that it was leaking pretty bad.

Just installed the catch can a few months ago.

What are my options on a intercooler?

Thanks.

 

The pump didn't have anything to do with it. These ICs are failing from stress fractures in the core due to the inherent design flaw of the core and repetitive heating and cooling cycles.

Right now, your options are either another OEM one from the dealer that will eventually fail again or the upgraded one Speedriven and I put together. The thread is located here: https://www.crossfireforum.org/forum...-got-real.html If you're interested or have questions about the upgraded IC, shoot me a PM.

As for the upper plenums, nothing sucks worse than having to clean all that crap out so good to hear you have a catch can to keep it all nice and clean after you clean these out. Best advice to clean them is with a high power pressure washer followed by new parts washer solvent or shoot in a can or two of brake cleaner and swish it around in there. If you don't get everything out with the pressure washer, you can leave them in the solvent over night but i wouldn't leave them in longer than say 8-10 hours.

Take care

 

I will go with Rudy's when mine goes out. It is well built with a very nice core, not the one that is from mexico that is often hand brazed, brand new, OEM. Woody posted up some good detail about our OEM intercoolers.

 

I do have to wonder what the ratio is of modified PSI (pully's) vrs stock setups on this failure

 

I have replaced close to 20 or so intercoolers and on the SLK32's and C32's only a few of them have had a pulley but every SRT6 I've replaced one in has had a pulley on it so I'd say it's about 50/50.

BTW, hope you took care of this before you buttoned everything up or you'll be looking at the same thing on the new ones in a few thousand miles.

 

Yes they can only be cleaned with pressure water cleaning. It is best way to clean such dirty looking parts

 

What we need is an early warning system to prevent a major clean up in the intakes. I had a plenum off this summer and it was a clean as a whistle in there, no oil at all and certainly no coolant.
Any ideas?
Fluid loss in the closed system?
Air in the closed system? Sight glass?
A window in the plenum?
Varying pressure in the fluid?
There has to be a way.

 

If you have a separated IC system and dont loose coolant your ok. If loosing coolant then you have a problem. Cant leak without loss of coolant. Woody

 

I pressured washed it out. Im about to take them back off again to add my bolt kit from Rob and some new gaskets. Interesting to see what I find.

My coolant was low, but due to a bad water pump, but since then I had it replaced I havent noticed anything.


Ill keep monitoring it until i can save up for a new one.

 

I would never have guessed.
You miss my point, early warning system, something obvious that shows you have a problem.

 

Something obvious is like Woody said; losing coolant. Those that have separated systems and an exchanger with a cap (like Woody), or those of us that have added a fill tank reservoir, simply open the cap and look. The smaller the tank, the quicker it is to be noticed. Early warning?...hmmm...I suppose we could install a low fluid sensor in the IC fill tank reservoir.

 

BINGO! Now like Picard says to #1, make it so!

 

Obviously losing coolant is what is going to happen, but simply stating the obvious was not what I was looking for.
That is why I specifically mentioned the closed system, loss of coolant would not be so obvious in the single system. The tank idea is what I am getting at, so how do we set it up? The drop in fluid level would be the early warning, simple.

 

install a low fluid sensor, or regularly check your fluid level... your sig states you have a separated system. By end of summer, I hope to have survived this, and will have the new Speedriven/Rudy system in the cars...

 

Really, that's where you are going to end it? So what are you guys up to?

 

Well, no, but that IC leak won't go away...rather do preventive maintenance than a clean up...lol...