I haven't had a lot of time to work on the car, and its been sitting in the garage with bits off it, collecting dust. Depressing, but work is progressing. I now have an Innovate LC-1 Wideband controller ready to install, the wiring in the engine bay is all completed (apart from the simple connections for the tachometer and coil for when the factory ones are removed - the wires are there ready to go though).
My adapter arrived also, for my throttle body, so I test fitted that up - interesting thing to note here is the size difference. The old one tapers down to meet the charge cooler, the new one doesn't, obviously, so that removes one restriction already.
I played with positions of the charge cooler to get a happy location that will allow the bonnet to close nicely. A lot of people say it isnt possible to fit this cooler nicely and keep the factory bonnet. That is lazy ********. It is possible, it just takes effort, and some engineering. Here is the adapter bolted up with the silicon hose adapter fitted.
And here is an over all shot of how it is going to sit - ignore the mess and the uglyness of the cooler - it will look much better when everything is back in place and the cooler and cam cover are painted. You may notice it is further forward than normal, that is to allow a bit of space for the coil on plug set up.
Now, I talked about engineering - here is is. The factory intake to the cooler doesnt suit the layout of the Gen 2. A lot of people heat up the pipe and just wrench it over to match the position of the turbo, this sits the cooler up high, and gives them those bonnet clearance issues. I have cut my pipe off, just to get it out of the way really, so I could line up the cooler where I want it. I'll be taking the car to get a new pipe made up and welded on to the cooler, it will be smooth and straight and line up to the turbo outlet to reduce turbulence within the intake. Being aluminium it will probably cost a bit to get done, but will be worth it. At the same time they will weld on V Band adapter for the BOV.
Not much else really. I have half made the brackets for the heat exchanger. Its just hanging from the top brackets for now, I have to fabricate the lower parts of the brackets and get them welded, and then paint them.
To do:
Finish the brackets for the heat exchanger
Get the charge cooler welded
Remove the cam cover, drill holes for coil mounting posts, soda blast.
Paint cam cover and charge cooler
Fit the water lines
Fill with water, bleed etc
Wire the O2 controller, then get the bung welded in to the exhaust
By the time I have all that done, I should have saved enough to finally buy the ECU and get it tuned! I'm quite hopeful that the charge cooler in itself will make a noticable increase in power, the cooler flows better, cools better, the intake has less restriction. It makes sense. I have removed my manual boost controller and just connected up the new boost solenoid to tidy things up, so until I get the new ECU to control the solenoid I'll be enjoying a measly 7psi, so I won't know if the charge cooler has made an improvement lol!
Has to be hell on the tranny though, probably won't do it again.
Only time i've gotten into an accident I got rear ended in my truck. Not a thing to mine, the Volvo however... 
