i've got the intercooler for my van so um airtec have uh supplied an intercooler for my 1.9 astra
van gtb 2260 i guess it's a project it's not really a project it's the it's my daily van but
it's outside of the minute with waiting for the gearbox to be done on it
but as soon as that's done we're getting that turbo on um so intercooler is obviously supplied
we've got it here so i thought we'd do an unboxing
yeah bloody love these things so we've used air tech intercoolers loads in the past
um being an air tech fan since they first uh started making voxel stuff really um
it's always been good gear majority of it's made in the uk as well which i like to see and that's
a big fan of made in the uk stuff um obviously it's difficult to make certain products in the uk
but um yeah the vast majority of their stuff is uk manufactured silicon um you know
all the finishings all done in the uk which is nice um yeah so we've got everything here the the
the intercooler core all the fixings hoses and pipes so yeah so keep on packing
cool tape not quite as cool as enhanced tape but you know it's not bad so originally um like in the
in the kind of vauxhall world you could only really get forged into coolers um there were a
couple of others like for the course of d it was a blizzard intercooler which regal sold
and there was courtney's own cooler um which is made by pro alloy and then
there was another one i can't remember what it was so there's another one um pace intercourse
that was that thought that thorner used to sell that was it really and then i think it was about
2014 15. airtec who were like massive in the ford world um started selling voxel products
obviously it was a more or less a copy of the forge kit but a lot cheaper
i'm not sure it needed to be so cheap to be honest it was a good product it worked really well
um but you know i think forged kind of held that market on their own for so long that it was easy
for somebody to kind of come in and almost undercut them a bit and i think they probably
did the wrong thing by not really reacting they didn't really kind of they didn't really lower
prices where they maybe could have they just kind of stuck to it and yeah now the name in uh
the vauxhall world for intercoolers is air tech so they kind of took over really
the first um air tech intercooler was like welded end tanks which was again because that's kind of
how the forge ones were and then as time went by obviously you know with the more you make of
something like that the easy it gets to a point where you need to change some of the processes
in order to make more of them in a less lesser period of time and actually make a better product
so that's when they went to these cast end tanks which are a lot nicer don't get me wrong a nice
folded welded end tank is nice but from a kind of manufacturing and production perspective they take
a long time to make these cast ones because it's a totally different process you can bang out loads
of them and it'll always be a not you can cast the shape you just can't make cost effectively by
cutting sheet and welding it together so you end up with a better product which is what we've got
so yeah this is now like their stage two intercooler core really
um yeah that's what we're gonna be running on the van pipe work to go with it obviously this is the
one that goes on the top here goes like that um hose in the middle again i'm pretty sure they
still do all the manufacturing of these in the uk um they definitely coat them all in the uk i know
that for sure but again like i think it gets to the point where with some products it just becomes
very hard to kind of manufacture them in the uk in the quantities that you need but yeah it's um
so good quality product you know it does it
you're looking for things on stuff like this like if we were to make something
like this you're looking for like you know does it feel like really thin and chintzy like it's
kind of chinese material where there's no wall thickness there because they're trying to make
it as thin and as cheap as possible and it's not like that you know the welds are nice it
doesn't look all like chinese welding you know you can just tell it's a good it's a good product
then the hoses that go with um funny thing with these hoses is that js performance make
pro hoses which are the hoses that airtec use in these kits which is their own brand
of hose pro hoses so js make these hoses so um js have made these in lincoln ship them to
air tech in essex and then they've come back here to lincoln again so
some of these hoses we won't use um so this is kind of this is this is like a hose kit for the
standard 1.9 intercool intercooler and turbo we're obviously not going to be using that
because the gtb turbo will be exiting out the kind of to the floor rather than up to the bonnet
some of these hoses we won't need but we'll figure that out as we go because we'll just
kind of use what we need and you know modify what we don't and then again what we've got in here
is uh more hype that we probably won't need it's just um just straight pipe
it's been coated so yeah and then we've also got
all our hose clips which again they use um jcs clips which are the same clips that we use
in all our induction kits stainless steel they've got a nice rolled edge on the inside so they don't
cut into the silicon you can tighten them up really tight you know that because they're
stainless the like worm drive body is really thick i mean it sounds like i'm going a bit nerdy on
hose clips but these really are proper beefy good hose clips you you almost can't beat them really
um and again it's nice to see that they're not they don't like cheap out and stuff like this
because again that's that's one thing that we always try and do with our kits is not cheap out
on you know you can make the intercooler really nice but if the hoses are you know not round
weird colored chinese type hoses and they're using really thin crappy mild steel clips that go
rusty in a year it totally kind of changes your opinion of the quality of the rest of the kit
so yeah it's nice to see that you know they're still using stainless steel clips like you know
you kind of know they are and then in here we've just got the brackets and the nuts and bolts so
the brackets you need because when you take out the standard thinner intercooler you lose all
the mounting points for the air con condenser so that's what these brackets are for there to
remount that and again nuts and bolts and they're all stainless which again is is it's one of those
things that a lot of people probably don't notice but you definitely notice it in a year's time when
they're all rusty and horrible so it's you know we've always used stainless fixings in all of our
kits for everything and it's uh you know it's nice to see that airtech do that as well you know it's
it's sometimes just the the details again things you might not notice initially but in a year's
time and everything started to go rusty you definitely do pick up on that so yeah nice
uh stainless nuts and bolts fitting instructions as well um fitted a few of these into coolers now
so i don't think i need those but um yeah so next thing to do is get it fitted up on the van