punishment said:

Are you serious? $150 per kit I wish, if you knew how little we actually make from these kits you would be surprised. If everyone who bought a kit had issues like you claim there would be hundreds and hundreds of posts from people who had issues instead of the handful there are.

If it's really that much of an issue we will discontinue the kits, like I said we don't make shit from them and if it's going to cause all sorts of drama then it's not worth it by any means. We bust our ass to keep our customers happy and to keep a good name for our shop and if the fmic kits are really causing that many issues there is really no sense in offering them any longer.

Tim

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NO DO NOT DISCONTINUE THIS KIT!!!! i will soon be purchasing this kit or my 92 tsi. and triming and fitment issues happen with all intercooler kits out there, i have herd of people who buy $1000 kits and have way more problems than with this amazing bolt on kit. and like he said this kit has alot of peices to be manufactured and of course there are going to be a handful of duds out there, i wouldnt hold it against pumishment if i got on. besides there have been more of these kits sold than there are members to this site and just because a couple of members do not like this kit does not mean they should get to ruin it for the ones who can hounestly say this is a amazing kit. i would almost be willing to pay 650 for this kit if the core was just a tad bigger.

Thanks Punishment Racing for your sweet kit and amazing low prices, also looking forward for the extra cash in my pocket after i get those cams hehehe

Is there anyway to possibly keep the 12" AC fan with this kit? Or maybe running it with punishment racing's radiator with slim fans?

I bought one of these used and I need the dang J pipe. I bought a Jpipe from ETD on ebay but the angle seems too sharp so the coupler and pipe will be rubbing the turbo and Motor mount.

peon_slayer said:

NO DO NOT DISCONTINUE THIS KIT!!!! i will soon be purchasing this kit or my 92 tsi. and triming and fitment issues happen with all intercooler kits out there, i have herd of people who buy $1000 kits and have way more problems than with this amazing bolt on kit. and like he said this kit has alot of peices to be manufactured and of course there are going to be a handful of duds out there, i wouldnt hold it against pumishment if i got on. besides there have been more of these kits sold than there are members to this site and just because a couple of members do not like this kit does not mean they should get to ruin it for the ones who can hounestly say this is a amazing kit. i would almost be willing to pay 650 for this kit if the core was just a tad bigger.

Thanks Punishment Racing for your sweet kit and amazing low prices, also looking forward for the extra cash in my pocket after i get those cams hehehe

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Are you serious? Not like they make it and nobody will be able to get them any more...O and not all intercoolers have fitment issues ,I had 0 issues with my ETS FMIC

Mine had a hole in the core and i talked to tim and he really didn't give me much help. Kinda disappointed. But it did fit well with a couple minor adjustments. But yah punishment owes me a little bit of money i had to take my core and get the hole tigged, buddy charged me 50$.

I have nothing against punishment. I bought a budget inter-cooling setup, I wasn't expecting it to go as nice as the SBR Race kit I installed on my buddy's race car.

This is possibly in part to me keeping my ABS (1994 had good AWD abs, i love it)

But they assured me that the install would go fine, I purchased the kit, and after a disappointing amount of custom fabricating, it works.

I really like the FMIC itself, i wish they would just sell the FMIC and not the entire kit.

oldman420 said:

Mine had a hole in the core and i talked to tim and he really didn't give me much help. Kinda disappointed. But it did fit well with a couple minor adjustments. But yah punishment owes me a little bit of money i had to take my core and get the hole tigged, buddy charged me 50$.

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You talked to Tim who? I don't recall any customer ever contacting us about a hole in their core.

If a customer did receive their kit and the core had a hole in it we would have shipped a replacement core out immediately.

IceMinion said:

I have nothing against punishment. I bought a budget inter-cooling setup, I wasn't expecting it to go as nice as the SBR Race kit I installed on my buddy's race car.

This is possibly in part to me keeping my ABS (1994 had good AWD abs, i love it)

But they assured me that the install would go fine, I purchased the kit, and after a disappointing amount of custom fabricating, it works.

I really like the FMIC itself, i wish they would just sell the FMIC and not the entire kit.

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We do sell just the fmic itself, you can find it here on our website:
1g talon/eclipse/laser front mount intercooler

Tim

$175 for the core? thats pretty fair.

Too bad I don't have any more 1G's laying around in need of a FMIC because I would buy that.

EDIT: My GVR4 needs a bigger FMIC...do you think it will fit?

(I won't believe your answer because you said my ABS wouldnt get in the way too badly, it did.)

Just giving you sh*t

the kit looks great, I agree theres going to be some minor differences I'm actually planning on purchasing the 2g fmic from you guys in a few weeks, for the money it cant be beat

Just finished installing my 1g kit from punishment. Took a while to cut the bumper, but everything went in with out too much of a problem. Just a couple of mods to the uic pipping. Love the kit! Well worth the few hundred they wanted. Thanks Tim, for selling a great budget kit, and great customer service.

MunkyX69 said:

Just finished installing my 1g kit from punishment. Took a while to cut the bumper, but everything went in with out too much of a problem. Just a couple of mods to the uic pipping. Love the kit! Well worth the few hundred they wanted. Thanks Tim, for selling a great budget kit, and great customer service.

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Did you have to cut the ACTUAL bumper or do you mean the crash beam?

The crash beam, sorry. The bumper could use to be trimed a little. The two posts that frame out the foglights could use to be shaved maybe a quarter inch towards the bottom lip, but every car is different. I just left mine, the bumper still went on, its just a really tight fit. Anyone else come into this?

can you keep the fogs with this kit on a 1ga???

I tried to get this damn thing to work. problem is the bov pipe is junk. talked to mike culver over at punishment and he told me
"We shipped over 30 kits from that same batch and I havent heard of any fitment issues, usually it just comes down to things needing to be tweaked a little to get everything to fit into such a tight area that wasnt designed from the factory to have a fmic kit."
sent him a pic and everything. I flipped the bov hard pipe both ways. the way it fits best is hitting the MAF and makes it hard to recirculate. if i flip it the other way, bov is close to the hood, piping don't line up anymore. Then i found out today that the bov flange isn't perfectly flat, ? i don't mind relocating the coolant bottle which i totally understand since it's a short route kit. a simple thing as to make the bov location easier to work with isn't too much to ask. just move it up 2-3 inches.
what i'm going to do now is get a new pipe made by a shop around here. quoted 100 for it not including flange for 1g/greddy.

if you expect to get it installed and start moving in one day, forget it. i dont' like installing stuff and had to stop to either get it welded by someone else, find some more parts to get it to work OR it don't look clean on the car. make your own bracket to install the intercooler or let it hang does not cut it for me. i had a L bracket made and welded to the intercooler. should been like that from the start. coolant bottle relocation is a given for short route.

this is reply is to help anyone looking for FMIC.

I installed mine about a month ago, it went in fine but the lower pipe is about an 1.5" to short and the upper pipe is to long and rubs my hood. I have a neighbor with a big tig welder in his garage that will fix it for me so no big deal. All in all it seems like a good kit.

I installed my kit abt a year ago and I love everything abt it. I managed to keep my fog lights by modding the brackets a little and I had am using a jmf front bumper support to fit core.

1stGenTSi said:

Wow, If there are 98% of people who didn't have any fitment issues, they either had a different kit, or a different car. EVERYONE had fitment issues, there's no way you couldn't have fitment issues. If only SSAC would make a short-route 1g kit you wouldn't sell a single one of these hack-job IC kits. The only thing you could do in good faith is lower the price dramatically and state "THIS IS AN EBAY THROWN-TOGETHER KIT WITH GENERIC PIPING, POOR FITMENT, AND A CXRACING CORE YOU CAN BUY FOR $100. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK" I'd be willing to bet they pay no more than $150 for each kit (probably less.) Anyways, I appreciate LaN's effort in building a reasonably priced, eBay sourced 1g kit, and showing everyone how he made it work. But when this kit was sold to a respected vendor, you would expect them to make the proper modifications to make this a well-designed kit. You just said your-self you sell $100,000 worth of these kits a year, so for Christ's sake make them fit right!

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Some cores have louvered internal fins; some have staggered. I've not seen an ebay core with either internal fin design. Louvered is a bit more efficienct but at a great sacrefice to flow. . .

The CX core doesn't have staggered fins on the inside of the core. It has non staggered and non louvered fins. Just fins that let the air go straight through' save ordered holes punched in the fins. Not too good for transfering heat. What does this core have? I'm interested in this core if it doesn't let the airflow just shoot straight through the cooler without doing much cooling. . .

He is a kit on Ebay that has Offset & Staggered Internal Fins
1g DSM Intercooler Kit FMIC tsi gsx talon eclipse 16g :eBay Motors (item 330374872467 end time Nov-16-09 06:13:06 PST)
Just don't expect a Ebay Price For ETS quality

Not looking to pay that much when you can get a garrett core PTE intercooler which is more proven and make your own piping and save about $400 . . . Great product though.

modifications. I had to cut and reweld the J pipe because it was 1/8th inch away from motot mount.

PR or ebay same stuff

I'm looking at this kit also but I have a few questions.

1. I know the stock a/c fan must be removed but can you run slim fans instead?
2. Can I run slim fans with a aftermarket rad?
3. Can I keep my factory oil cooler and power steering cooler or do I have to relocate them?

About discontinuing these kits i think you should. When people buy tons of parts of ebay it does nothing but hurt shops. Its not helping the supporting vendors of this community.


I own two business' and i tell that same bull shit to people everyday.

"if you knew how much i really made you would be suprised"

shit the guy next door to me says that crock of shit line everyday and he has a 50 percent markup on 85 percent of his inventory.

So has any one who owns this Punishment kit looked inside at the core to inspect it? Is it louvered? or staggered? Or can you see daylight out the other side?

I installed my PR kit about a year ago with only one problem. I had to have the BOV hole plugged and moved to the side. The kit fit fine with a stock BOV, but my HKS SSQ was hitting the hood when i closed it. As far as the fins i haven't checked but i will check today when i get off, and post some pics of the changes.

You guys have any pics of how you mounted it? So far my experience with this kit has been terrible, and I may have to cut the UICP and hood latch support to get the FMIC sitting as far back as I want it, and if don't do that then I'll have to cut a ton of the bumper. I was really expecting more from Punishment.