I've just had an intercooler replaced due to an air leak. The garage showed me the old one and it seems there may be a potential design flaw. Part of the plastic inlet mount which attaches on to the intercooler seems to rest on the base of the metal rad core itself over time this seems to have worn a small notch which has finally gone through and created a hole where a small amount of air can escape - it seems it's not enough to throw up any boost faults or really much loss of power but does create a definite hissing noise. It was the same fit with the new intercooler so my garage have just cut a thin rubber strip to put between plastic and metal so it can't happen again. Just a heads up if anyone has their intercooler off, or replaced check it out for any signs of wear and stick something in there to isolate the two. Will save you the £264 for a new IC, luckily covered by a warranty company for me.

I'm trying to picture where about's yours will have been touching, as when I took mine off a few weeks ago, it definitely wasn't catching anywhere.

Maybe one of your brackets is slightly bent?

I've just had an intercooler replaced due to an air leak. The garage showed me the old one and it seems there may be a potential design flaw. Part of the plastic inlet mount which attaches on to the intercooler seems to rest on the base of the metal rad core itself over time this seems to have worn a small notch which has finally gone through and created a hole where a small amount of air can escape - it seems it's not enough to throw up any boost faults or really much loss of power but does create a definite hissing noise. It was the same fit with the new intercooler so my garage have just cut a thin rubber strip to put between plastic and metal so it can't happen again. Just a heads up if anyone has their intercooler off, or replaced check it out for any signs of wear and stick something in there to isolate the two. Will save you the £264 for a new IC, luckily covered by a warranty company for me.

I'm sure I've read of this happening before on a Golf. So not a new problem, just (hopefully) a rare one. I've seen pics in the thread but I can't recall where that was now. I'm almost sure it was over on TDICLUB. The fix then was to use a draught excluder tape or similar to space the inlet guide away from the intercooler body.

J.

Noticed mine had done it too last year when I replaced the turbo, I just trimmed the plastic shroud a bit with a knife, and it ain't rubbing any more! Defo worth a check if you have the bumper off. I guess you could always build it back up a bit with chemical metal if it's started to wear through! I sealed a small crack in my IC with the stuff, bloody marvellous! :-)

As an extra piece of maybe(worthless) info, to check for leaks on my IC, what I did was get an old bike inner tube, cut it along the inside all the way around so that it was like a flat band with the valve in the middle. Then cut the valve portion out and pulled it over one of the inlets to the IC and fix with a big jubilee clip. Then cut a plain section out and fix it over the other end, then use a small compressor to pressurise whilst it's under water, this highlighted my leak that I fixed with chemical metal!

Edited 19 July, 201114 yr by jacko2111