Thought this was worth a mention as seen a few now. Basically I guess its just a case of you get what you pay for.

Have worked on a few cars with ebay I/C fitted where they have been a bit disappointing performance wise. Having investigated have found that the cores on the coolers are partially blinded by bad manufacturing processes so the pressure drop across them is huge.

 

Had an extreme example recently helping out a member over the phone, car wouldn't rev over 1800rpm with no load as the core was so bad!!

 

On top of that, if you pay £200 for a cooler that costs £800 from the likes of Pace then you can't expect to get the same performance, they're just badly made copies with the cheapest available materials, turbulators etc.

 

Same goes for radiators. When I had the core for mine made they were in the process of benchmarking some competitors rads using an F1 car unit as a standard. My core was something like 95% whereas some of the popular big name ones were way down on that, closer to 75%.

Can you name any brands to avoid John, As i have a huge front mount on mine i thinks its an Autobaun (similar to the HKS model) looks to be good quality and seems to do the job?

 

Cheers Craig

Wise words John, i've said for years on here about how bad some of the copy intercooler stuff is.

Jap performance some years ago tested about 6 coolers on the same scooby and dynoed the car each time. Certainly the ebay jobbies whilst looking very professionaly done and all shiny etc, in most cases were either as effcient as stock or at best, just over stock. ( 1 cooler was even worse than stock)

 

Much of the big name branded companies set out using the best quality cores and often hand finishing their coolers as they aimed at the motorsport world, not boy races, plus they have a name to uphold too.

At the end of the day it is one of those products where the good looks can hide the faults!

 

Craig, when i was in business couple years back,Aotobahn were offering me their products with a 25% discount on their normal prices, how they make them and then make a profit on the current retail price i'l never know, let alone then to offer a 25% discount ontop..

smithy

:( would you know how to test them as if its dragging performance down then ill change it when i change engines shortly?

Only way to know really is do a back to back comparison or check for obvious blinding etc. As for makes to avoid, I think the one that was almost completely blocked was technosport or something similar. As a general rule, anything from china, taiwan etc. is usually pretty bad or if it just seems too good a deal!

What is the verdict on the japspeed front mounts?

:( would you know how to test them as if its dragging performance down then ill change it when i change engines shortly?

 

 

 

'Monster' was running an Autobahn fmic and was achieving nigh on 600 brake on his 'Z'

Never used their kit myself but might be worth pm'ing him for info.

I have an ebay front mount on mine at the moment that was fitted when i bought the car. Is there an easy way I can check the quality? Or any pressure drop? I have had a boost leak test on the car and it didnt have any leaks.

I have always thought that cheap crap cant be good but other than testing on a rolling road there isnt an easy way to tell! I do have a pair of standard SMIC still, is it worth putting those back on?

Intereste din this. Ive bought a front mount on ebay.

It was from the uk, and my mate fitted one from the same place on his 200sx and was fine, so i took a punt. I plan to fit it at the weekend, should i bother??

As I said, really hard to tell without doing comparisons.

Obvious things to look for if you can see down the cores are any blockages or remaining flux - can look sort of like sand, any misalignment between the rows if its bar and plate construction etc.

The only real way to tell would be to do back to back tests measuring differential pressure and temp across each one.

Think someone in the states did a test looking only at diff pressure but by its self that's meaningless, you could produce a core with no turbulators that would have very low DP but would have useless heat transfer, the design of any cooler is a compromise between the 2 if the volume is the same.

Toyosport was the make he bought John.

'Monster' was running an Autobahn fmic and was achieving nigh on 600 brake on his 'Z'

Never used their kit myself but might be worth pm'ing him for info.

 

Cheers mate, If he was pulling 600bhp with one of these im only gonna be pushing 400 so I recon it will be fine.

 

Thanks

 

Craig