intercoolers

[Johnybeas]

I've noticed a lot of people turboing lately so I had a few questions to all of you about intercoolers that I think some of us who are planning and trying to save up to do it as well.

1. What is the size everyone is using for their intercoolers?

2. Are any particular brands better than others?

3. Are there any particular styles that work better for our car, or in general?

[STeeL25T]

I don't have anything nailed down yet, but I'm looking to go water to air. Seems foolish not to since you don't have to cut your bumper support, it takes less space and less piping, I think it actually cools better, and to top it off its cheaper. http://www.frozenboost.com/ will sell you a full kit for 280 bucks.

I think I'm going to buy a few things from them and vulture the rest of the parts off of an SVT Cobra or Lightning as they likely have better quality pumps and exchangers.

I'll probably be buying this http://www.frozenboost.com/product_info.php?cPath=218&products_id=220&osCsid=02ea79e87c8c01a889b4068d096bf526

[Phast SVX]

my intercooler is too small. My car feels lopsidedly faster in cool weather. It is 27x7x3.5", with 2.5" endtanks.

[BoxerFanatic]

my intercooler is too small. My car feels lopsidedly faster in cool weather. It is 27x7x3.5", with 2.5" endtanks.

Water to air makes sense...

But where under the hood do you plan to fit a water to air intercooler core... even if the heat exchanger is mounted up front.

It would not seem that a Subie H4-like TMIC location would be ideal, considering how close the throttle bodies are to the firewall... H4 TBs are in a completely different location.

A lot would likely depend on turbo location... one or two turbos... low front, low aft of the engine, or high-aft of the engine...

I can only imagine how much it would cost to build a new intake manifold that incorporated a couple of laminova liquid intercooler cores, and go that far custom.

[STeeL25T]

I've mentioned before I'm going with a rear mounted turbo, so I using the cylinder shaped intercooler I posted I can mount it anywhere in the piping on the under side of the car.

[Seraphinwolf]

I got a chance to glance at some personal notation at Synaptic3 from when a few guys there were thinking of turboing their SVX. RX7 Intercoolers mounted as the intake manifold. So basicly the core was the manifold. Looked interested and making me tempted to talk to them more about it.

[Phast SVX]

I got a chance to glance at some personal notation at Synaptic3 from when a few guys there were thinking of turboing their SVX. RX7 Intercoolers mounted as the intake manifold. So basicly the core was the manifold. Looked interested and making me tempted to talk to them more about it.

That makes absolutely no sense man, sorry.

There is no major problem here or mystery or even best solution. I am just going to stick a bigger one in there by modifying the bumper beam and cover.

[Nevin]

Too often people just buy a random size of intercooler (or turbo for that matter) without actually sitting down and doing the math to figure out what they actually need.

Not to be johnny raincloud or anything like that, but you need to read some books. "Maximum Boost," "Turbos, Superchargers, and Nitrous, "Turbos and high tech performance," and "How to Tune and Modify Engine Management Systems" are ones that I have on my shelf and have helped me learn a LOT about this kind of thing. Am I an expert? By no means. But I have a much clearer picture of what I actually want, and what I need to do to get it.


You need to get a target hp figure in mind, find out what turbo you'll be using and figure out it's efficiency at whatever pressure you want to be running, then find an intercooler with a pressure drop/efficiency ratio that you can live with to achieve your horsepower level.

If that is too confusing, just buy a random one that fits. :lol:

People sometimes get the wrong thing and it can turn into an interheater in the right (or wrong) temperatures, and then sometimes people also go WAAAY overkill and get the ZOMG!! 4" racing quadruple core JDM FAST unit when they really don't need it.

Usually, you can buy intercoolers based on their hp. rating, so you can also just know that, and take that route.

[RallyBob]

Talk to Cartech, they have reasonably priced intercoolers and intercooler cores, in literally hundreds of sizes. More importantly, their head engineer knows his $hit. He worked for Ferrari in the F1 turbo era, and then later on for Nissan during their IMSA GTP heyday (think 1100 hp from production-based 3.0 litre V6 reliably...).

He'll ask you a ton of questions, but they're all relevant. HP goals, space restrictions, application, etc. As others have mentioned, there's more to it than just sticking the biggest intercooler you can fit in the front of the car.