Ebay intercoolers

[Doctor G]

Anyone has experience with these intercoolers?

Would you recommend them and is there anything specific to be aware of?

[Hennie Marais]

depends on the application, for street use it will do, but if you go for all out performance I would suggest getting a namebrand one. Do not work on their flowrates, they say "can flow up to **hp", but that the max it can flow and that is not were the cooler is efficient, at the max efficiency the flow might only be half their stated HP. Look at namebrands, when they say **hp flow it means it's at around 1psi or less pressureloss and where the cooler is the most efficient, it can flow nearly dubble their stated hp at max flow. So just be aware when you buy one.

[The Calibrator]

And make sure you buy one with lots of short rows running vertically as they are way more effcient with with much less pressure loss than 8 rows 2m long.
If you dont know what I mean look at any of the intercoolers I fit to my conversions.

[Hennie Marais]

yip, agree with you on the virtical flowing one, specially in high HP applications where you need a high CFM cooler. Just finding them is sometimes a hassle as most cooler are normally horisontal flowing. I had to do a special order from Spearco for one for my car, getting it only on the 27th Aug.

Oh, only other reason vertical might be a pain is the plumbing of the boost pipes.

[Doctor G]

I don't know where my plans for the sx will end up, but I'm not looking for a drag car.

Probably more of a fast-street, possibly a drift car. Capable of a 13.5 sec 1/4 mile is more than enough power for me ATM.

What I like about the ebay coolers are that most of them come as a complete kit, so you know it will fit without any modification or too much effort.

The upside of the vertical flow coolers are off course efficiency, but the downsides for me are:
Looks (The horizontal looks better to me) and the vertical ones core sizes dont seem to allow them to fill the bumper as nicely as a horizontal.
Plumbing. Needs custom plumbing = money and downtime

Whould a horizontal with properly designed end tanks including some baffles that distribute the air evenly through the core be just as efficient as a vertical cooler?

[The Calibrator]

You just cant beat the physics.
The longer a row is the more resistance it has hence more pressure loss.
The greatest heat transfer occurs at the greatest tempterature difference. By the halfway point of your long row the temperature difference is very great and so the heat transfer drops off. BAsically the 1st half of the cooler cools fairly well and after that it doesnt do much.

Same thing when you make a core thicker the back 1/3rd isnt doing much work.

So you have a cooler that is long to fill your bumper up nicely its thick so it looks impressive and it only has 8 or 10 rows so it can fit into your car and it has inlet and outlet on the same side of the cooler.

The other one has 22 rows can be thinner and has inlet and outlet on different sides.

To me that means cooler charge air which = more power and less detonation which also means you can run it leaner and so use less fuel.
You also have more air getting to the radiator which means the car is less prone to overheating.

I am a function over form kind of guy so to me its pretty obvious what to use.

[Hennie Marais]

Thats 100% true, I couldn't have said it better.

But the ebay coolers is not bad, there's a lot of different conpanies that manufacture them, so if you choice one, make sure it the best. If I would have to fit one, then I would go for one of the following sizes.

600X300X100
600X300X75
450X300X75

The first one is not always available, the second 2 will be easy to get and will give good results on a street car. If you want it too look good then go for the 600X300X75, it'll fill the bumper nicely.