I was curious if upgrading to a larger intercooler creates more turbo lag than stock intercooler on the stock turbo. I have heard mixed comments on the issue and i was hoping you guys can share your thoughts or any tested results. Thanks

 

i have a 3" ETS no problems at all, did not notice any late spoolup after changed my IC

 

I agree; though anything larger than a 3" may produce more lag. Once again it depends on the other mods as well. ETS, Perrin, AMS, and AGP make pretty good intercoolers. Just food for thought...

 

Mathmaticly I could see that as a possiblity, there is now more room to pressurize with the larger intercooler... Your stock unit lets say is a square foot of internal space(numbers only to show example), your upgraded one is now 1.5 cubic feet. If you change nothing else, but the cooler, you now have .5 of a cubic foot to presurize that wasn't there to begin with.

Only logical thing I can think of, but good question.

 

may lag increased when i got a 3.5 in. intercooler. wasnt by much though. i dont even notice now

 

Like 3 years ago I wrote a good article regarding stock turbo and big intercooler. I fitted the biggest intercooler you could fit on a Evo III (back then it was the Nisei). I never ran faster nor quicker, I lost spool up(spool up got worse) and maximum boost but later on I was able to compensate the max boost by turning the MBC. I sold my intercooler within weeks, also, no increase on power after adding other bol-ons like header, 3" o2 housing and another thing, can't remember if it was the inginition amplifier.


The stock intercooler does a fantastic job. I buildt 2G GSX using basic bolt ons, I managed to squeeze 409 whp(mustang dyno) with the stock Evo intercooler. I am a firm believer that the stock intercooler could easily support 450whp+. I don't have internals on my 7 bolt 2G DSM otherwise I would had crank the boost up on my FP3052 and I would asure you I could see 500 whp out of the stock Evo IC.

Stick with the stock intercooler if you are using the stock turbo. Yeah, some people claim some gains with upgarding the intercooler but perhaps there are other loses as well(spool up and lost of boost).

I would only suggest upgrading the intercooler if you are pushing plenty of air(bigger turbo) otherwise I would leave it stock. Unlike other cars such the Stealth/3000 GT VR4, 1 G DSM, 2 g DSM, Audis TT, the Evo intercooler not only is "big" but it is also positioned ina privileged location, it truly gets all the air.

Additionally, I wrote another article 3-4 years ago in which I pointed out the fact that the Evos are limited in the amount of surface in contact with the outside air. Basically if you put a intercooler that is excesively huge you will then block good portions of the intercooler with the bumper.

Just do a search on my name, you wilol find the topics/threads. My .2c

Carlos

 

Boost is measured at the gate, as to what it can hold, right?
So, is this to say if you do get a bigger cooler, that your guage will see the output of what the turbo is pushing across the gate. Not what is actually being forced into the Intake by the impeller... Would it be beneficial to put a bung on the intake charge pipe before the TB to see what pressure the TB is seeing? Would this not cause issues for it is actually not running boost as to what is being displayed? How would one balance this affect?

Edit: I think I have it backwords. The gate is driven by the sensor that detects the boost across the intake?

 

I think if u run higher boost then you will gain about 10-20whp. But if you just gonna keep it at stock boost or below 21psi I doubt you'd notice a diff.

 

My last car was an Mr2 turbo. Now those cars are limited for amount of surface area in contact with outside air,hehe(side mount IC). There are quite a few higher hp mr2s (350 rwhp++) with upgraded ICs that are half the size of our stock evo IC. Now having a vehicle that can actually utilize a fmic is great, but I also feel the stock one is good size as is. A good way to gauge if you need a larger IC would be to get a air intake temp gauge, single or dual, and see what your intake temps are actually at. I dont hear of people doing this often though.

 

yes it will by a bit since u need to fill more volume but u can tune for more timing and boost so it makes up for it in power gains

 

Anyone have any dyno results of before and after larger intercooler install