We got the turbo to fit with the stock fans. My dad also got his turbo to fit his Focus with it's stock fans and there's less clearance between his engine block and fans than my Cougar.
The Cougar and Contour have the same chasiss. I got a FMIC, you should be able too...no?
Here's a pic of my old intercooler.
We mounted it in the engine bay first, but ultimately it was just a big heat sink. Still did 146whp and 156wtq with the stock fuel and ECU.
I wanted bigger so I got this, a Starion intercooler.
Here's a side by side comparison:
Twice as many fins and about twice as big, though not quite as thick. ULtimately I still think the Starion is a bit small and if I had to do it over I would have shelled out $300+ for a nice, new big intercooler.
It was fine for my dad's purposes, but he remade the end tanks for smoother flow.
It fit perfectly inside the Focus bumper, he painted it black for a stealth look. With that and a tiny IHI RHB5 off a old subaru, he did 136whp and 150tq at 5.5psi on a mustang dyno with a safe tune. He also had stock airbox and stock exhaust.
Exhaust pipe is fine for intercooler piping. I made my piping out of it after finding this site:
http://home.earthlink.net/~turbogus2/cooler.htmlI think his prices there are a bit dated though. Still, it was so obvious to do it like that we would have never thought it up on our own.
As for your turbo's donor car not having a cooler....factory turbo cars have forged rods and pistons and lower compression so they can withstand deto better. Also OEMs are cheap and typically go with the minimum they can get away with.
The Zetec's compression is too high and the rods, pistons, and rings too weak to run boost without a cooler, unless you know your tuning. The only guy on the focaljet I know running 9psi, non-intercooled has a Pectel stand-alone for engine managment and he's a former Ford engineer and tuned his car from scratch. He also open tracks it a lot.
http://home.earthlink.net/~turbogus2/intercoolers.htmlThis guy also did a test of intercooler air resistance using a simple water pressure scale and leaf blower to see how much resistance was seen when air was blown through certain coolers. The dodge cooler had the second worst resistance or the second worse flow. That's why I wanted to ditch it and get a new one. Though modifying it like my dad did to have the end tanks flow straight in/out instead of those lousy bends will improve flow a bit. Eithe way, like I said, if I had it to do over again, I'd have spend serious money on a good FMIC.
