InlineTwin said:
Where are the dyno results? It would seem better at higher HP but what about stock IC vs. CPE IC HP? Is there a point in replacing the IC if that is all you will do to the car? At what boost/HP combination would a gain be seen?
I understand front mounts to be beneficial to drag cars because of the high delta P cooling air flow across the core to achieve steady state quickly, but it is not as beneficial to a daily driver, which only sees a small percentage of time under boost. Would a top mount not be better for a lower power car, due to shorter IC tubes, and the low duty cycle of the IC? I.E. better traffic driving and on ramp acceleration.
We are not going to provide dyno results because there are no standardized testing procedures for dynoing a front mount intercooler compared to a top mount. Since the stock top mount is choked by the intercooler ducting, and the front mount has nearly unlimited airflow potential, the more fan you have, the better the front mount is going to perform. Bolt-on performance parts like cold air kits don't rely as heavily on dyno fans because all they need to do is keep the engine at a proper operating temperature, whereas the intercooler efficiency is directly coupled to the fans output when you dyno. If we dyno'd our front mount, than a competitor could one-up us just by using larger fans, and our intercooler would "seem inferior." So, we took a more direct approach and measured the temperature and pressure drop, since these are the things that
make horsepower. If someone claims to make a better intercooler than us, we'd like to see legitimate efficiency numbers, not just horsepower. With that said, there will be dyno numbers from our customers shortly after the release of the intercooler. So even though we won't be dynoing the product ourselves, I'm sure someone else will do it.
And we're not afraid to tell you that there may not be a huge increase in horsepower with just the addition of the front mount, since the drop in outlet temperatures is about 30F with an apples to apples comparison. But you're also neglecting all of the top mount's weak points, which makes any apples to apples comparison on the street virtually impossible. This is the very difference between lab testing and field testing. If you have any experience in product testing (and it sounds like you do) then you'll be painfully familiar with this concept. But you're right in that this product isn't for everyone. If you're looking for great a 'bang for the buck' upgrade just in terms of horsepower, then maybe this isn't a good upgrade for you. But there are very legitimate reasons for the addition of a FMIC.
Let's just assume for a moment that you aren't capable of tuning the car. This is still a great upgrade for several reasons: First, our FMIC does have a higher thermal efficiency, so anytime you're under boost, your outlet temps will be lower than stock. Moreover, the turbo is going to be closer to its optimal efficiency range, which will drop turbo outlet temps even more. And people seem to neglect EGT's, but if you've never measured your exhaust gas temperature, it isn't uncommon to see 1400F+ right out of the turbo outlet (nailbyt) . The intercooler will naturally help drop EGT's too.
Then there's heatsoak. You can see by the thermal images what happens to the intercooler when you come to a stop. Everytime you come to a stoplight, your intercooler absorbs waste heat from the engine. This DRASTICALLY affects the intercoolers ability to cool the compressed air, and thermal efficiency takes a nose dive. A top mounted intercooler is placed there as a compromise as it makes packaging easier, and is often cheaper too. But it isn't ideal for making horsepower. Like you said, the highest static pressure is in front of the car, and the intercooler ducting capitalizes on the high pressure, but ducting invariably will reduce the air velocity before it gets to the intercooler. This is just a property of any viscous flow.
And even though heat makes horsepower, engines have to find a happy medium between temperature and component longevity. You'll notice that there is very little airflow in and out of the engine bay, and using the intercooler ducting to evacuate waste heat isn't a bad side effect of moving the intercooler to the front of the car.
And how do you figure that the TMIC has a low duty cycle? This may be true while puttering around town, but we tried our best to illustrate that exactly the opposite is true if you're laying into the throttle. If you look at the "Thermal Loading" section of the paper, you can see how both cores react to heat input at stock boost levels. Intercoolers work because you're exchanging the heat from one medium to another. In order for heat transfer to take place, there must be a temperature difference. If the stock core was properly sized, then it's core temperature would remain relatively constant under load like ours does. But the stock core reaches a point where the heat coming in exceeds the heat transfer out of the core and the core temperature increases. The result is more heat in the air charge that can't be expelled through the intercooler.
However, you do make a very legitimate point in regards to the added throttle lag. Although we contend that there is no added lag (or at least no
perceivable lag) I think what we're going to do is log the boost pressure versus rpm for both the TMIC and our FMIC. In fact, we have a customer who has our Standback (which can perform the datalogging) and the stock TMIC, but is upgrading to the FMIC in the next couple weeks. What we can do is log the boost pressure versus rpm for both cases, before and after the swap. That way we can overlay the two graphs to see exactly how much added lag there really is. THAT, should be very interesting!
Jordan
