If you can afford it, and you know your going to need it, hell why not? Now you have to figure out which one you should get?
This will depend on your ultimate HP goal and trying to compare air flow capacities with what your going to need, good luck with that.

 

Well the two big mods that I know are coming eventually are the Toda 2.3L kit (unless it turns out to be crap, but Toda doesn't put out crap) and the HKS GT3037 turbo upgrade. Cams might come, too, but the two power adds are what I plan to finish up with. If each add nets 100hp, then I will be pushing 550-600hp when all is said and done. You can understand my concerns for longetivity now...

Any suggestions on a good intercooler? I understand ARC makes a very good bar and plate IC, but it is expensive and hard-to-get here in the US (from what I've been told).

 

I'll start off by saying that the stock IC is a very well designed unit. It does a great job of reducing charge air temperatures, but it does get restrictive once you start making more power.
Intercooler design is more than just slapping a big core on the car, end-tank design is important also. I tested the stock unit with thermocouples on the intake and outlet, and also with pressure taps that I put into the intake and outlet side end-tanks. We where making about 325whp (front wheels) when I took measurements of the stock intercooler, so obviously the car was not stock. The stock intercooler was effective at reducing the charge temperature but I would see a 2-3psi pressure drop across the core at higher RPM's. I'll explain what this means. The turbo is pumping out let's say 20psi at the outlet, the charge air has to travel though the IC piping, across the intercooler, through more piping, and finally into the intake manifold. Your boost gauge (if hooked up correctly) will be monitoring Intake manifold pressure. Depending on how restrictive the complete piping and intercooler setup is, you might only be seeing 16-17psi of pressure in the intake manifold while the turbo is pushing 20psi. The higher the boost (pressure ratio), the more work is being put into the air to compress it, thus the hotter it is. So you want to reduce any pressure drops from your turbo to intake manifold so your turbo doesn't have to work as hard, colder denser air = more horsepower. Another thing we run into is that the EVO8 turbo starts to run out of steam at anything over 350hp. The turbo cannot flow enough air and you can see this if you try to run 22psi of boost at 7K rpm, the boost pressure drops off. So now if you remove 1psi of pressure drop across the intercooler core, you are going to see that extra 1psi in the intake manifold and make more power. For example with the stock intercooler we where able to spike the boost to 24-25psi and it would drop to about 20psi at the top of 4th gear at the dragstrip. With an upgraded intercooler I can now hold 22psi of boost in the top of 4th gear (and see that gain on the dyno). So in summary do I recommend an intercooler upgrade as the first thing to do?, no. In our EVO8 upgrade path you don't see an upgraded intercooler come into play until after stage 1 (the basics). I hope this was informative and helps to clear some things up.

Martin

 

thanks... your IC doesnt require any changes to the A/C fan/steering coolers etc..... right Martin?

-Shahul

 

In that case you probably want to go with the biggest IC you can fit in there. My HP goals are far more modest, so I have not really been looking at the EVO after market IC's. Most of the vendor's don't advertise flow rates, so you may need to do a little research, here are some link's that may help you:

http://www.turboneticsinc.com/air.html

http://www.racetep.com/atoa.html

The Pruven IC looks pretty big, but of course there are others so...
Bar and plate used to be the standard Spearco core type, it is very durable (especially for front mounts) and seems to flow well, so it's probably not a bad core choice.

Good luck,

Eric

 

Thanks Eric

 

Just went to your web site, looks good, thank's for the info

Do you think your IC will work for the amount of power Chris wants to make? Maybe he would need larger piping also?

Thanks again,

Kind regards,


Eric

 

for about $350. you can get the NX Intercooler chiller. That should help alot with some mods as well.

 

it'll help, but it won't help the loss of pressure.. like martin said, above..

this is such a nice piece.... and for $795 how can you go wrong??

it's 80's and humid here in chicago, and my car feels like it's a nice low humid 60 degree day (with the stock IC)...

 

I didn't link this so here it is....

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sh...threadid=33349

 

Martin - thanks for the post. Very helpful.