皆さんそれは久しぶりです.
These past few months have been some of the most difficult months of my life. My wife was hospitalized on two separate occasions, two weeks apart. Her life was in danger, and ultimately she needed to be checked into a rehabilitation facility for over a month. Luckily, her recovery has been quick and she's planning to be discharged next Wednesday, on my birthday...what a great birthday present for me!
Well, my FD, has really been a source of comfort for me during these tough times. Having it to fall back on when times got tough and being able to work on it when everything else was falling apart, gave me a sense of control and satisfaction. I'm grateful that i can enjoy such a passion even in the midst of this trial.
A mod that i've been wanting to do for a long time now was a vマウントI/Cキット. The two main reasons were:
1. I wanted my car to run cooler, and hence more reliably
2. I didn't want to have to trim my front bumper because of my FMIC when i eventually got around to buying and installing an RE雨宮 N1 02 model front bumper.
Here's a picture of my Greddy FMIC I/C kit:
I originally wasn't planning to do this mod until sometime next year, but when a fellow rx7club member posted their vマウントI/Cキット for sale on the forums, i couldn't help but jump on it, mainly because he was local, which meant i didn't have to pay shipping costs, and i also didn't have to wait a couple of weeks to receive it in the mail.
Here's a picture of the kit i got:
The unique thing about this kit is that it allows you to mount the A/C condenser BEHIND the radiator rather than in front. But the problem with that was the fans were no longer flush against the radiator when mounted, which produces this gap at the top:
So before i installed the kit, i decided to make a bracket to block off this gap and allow the fan to work more effectively when it turned on:
Once the bracket was done i began fitting all the parts onto the car. It took a few days because i had to cut new pipes for my turbo and also for my HKS BOV. Here's a picture of one of my preliminary fitment tests:
Eventually i got the piping exactly the way i wanted and was able to finish my installation. Overall, the install was relatively straight forward, with the pipe cutting and A/C line bending being the two hardest parts of the install. But i gotta say, i really LOVE how the vマウントI/Cキット looks in the FD engine bay. Here's a comparison shot between my old Greddy FMIC setup and my new vマウントI/Cキット:
Greddy FMIC
vマウントI/Cキット
Of course the most important part after the install was to take the care for a test drive. First of all, the car doesn't necessarily spool quicker as others would have you believe because of the shorter piping, but the car does now boost 11psi whereas before it was only boosting around 9psi. But the main benefit so far is definitely cooling effect that it's had on both air temperature as well as the water temperature. The weather is extremely cold, so i won't be able to gauge the true effectiveness of this vマウントI/Cキット for another 6 months.
And lastly, i'll leave you with a pic i took at my favorite local destination, Round Valley:
vマウントI/Cキット 
皆さんそれは久しぶりです.
