[Rick-sta]

When I done some research on the fuel cooler back when I had my typhoon's exhaust done by MIJ, particularly on the BMW forums as they have a similar cooler on their diesels, the general answer around the fuel cooler was it's not really needed apart from on very hot days which we very rarely have in the UK (like around 30oc days).

Many on the BMW forums deleted it completely when they had issues such as fuel leaks there or wanted to get rid of it to make space for mods, however removing it completely isn't advised on our cars due to our fuel tanks being plastic whereas the BMW ones are metal.

Fuel isn't always constantly passed via the cooler, there's a inline thermostat valve which opens to allow the fuel to pass through the cooler once it reaches a certain temperature. There's a diagram on how it works on here somewhere in a old thread.

On my typhoon there was a slight issue when the fuel cooler was moved where the inlet and outlet fuel pipes to the cooler got bent at sharp angles which prevented fuel from flowing through the cooler. I had my exhaust done in early Feb of 2014 from memory, and the issue wasn't noticed until about 3 months later when we had the first of the warmer weather, where the engine would suddenly keep cutting out under hard acceleration. Went through checking all sorts of things that could have been causing it for a good couple months before Mike Noc I think it was advised me to check the fuel cooler for any issues there (after explaining how the fuel cooler works as I'd assumed the fuel returning to the tank was passed via the cooler at all times which wasn't the case).

I've never found the fuel cooler to ever get particularly hot, it gets quite warm in the summer months but no where near as hot as the rad would get for example. + although the original housing is designed with an air scoop to run air to the cooler when the car's moving, what about when the car's stuck in traffic for long periods? There's no air getting scooped up through the cooler then. If it needed constant air through the cooler I would have thought some sort of mini electric fan would have been fitted there.

So from my experiences and the research I done before hand, moving it to the position where I have is fine even though there's less air flow to it, but I wouldn't recommend removing it/bypassing it completely.