You have to be careful when you begin to consider the specs as listed. Say you look at CFM's i.e. how fast can the cooler flow air thru it, well the best CFM's would be literally a straight pipe. Now how much cooling will go on in a straight thru pipe? So saying I got a intercooler with a ton of CFM's and so its great is a ill-advised statement.

Next we have the idea that free flowing will lower the boost levels, well it shouldn't, your building pressure from the turbo to the intake valves, not turbo to the IC, if the IC is restricting the air flow (i.e. it can't flow fast enough, or not enough CFM's) then your going to have a decrease in performance that by replacing the intercooler with a larger, freer (sp?) flowing unit you will instantly get more pressure in the intake plenum and gain back a lot of performance lost.

If they list it, you want to see a estimate of surface area, how much aluminum cooling fin is exposed to air passing by. You want ALOT of raw surface area, and as many cooling rows or passages as possible. Nice would be if the air went thru 2 or more times thru the cooler before it goes to the outlet, downside is this will decrease CFM as each pass thru the cooler lowers the available pipes to pass the air thru (this one is tough to explain, let me take a shot: your cooler has 21 pipes from drivers to passenger, single pass, all the air goes thru and out. Now we go to a reflow situation, it goes Driver to Pass to Driver to Pass, we are now down to 7 pipes to flow air from intake to pass side, 7 take air back over to drivers side, then 7 back to pass air to the outlet, will 21 pipes outflow the 7 pipes? all day, every day, but the 7 pipe will be a much cooler, denser charge than the 21 pipes, well until you saturate the cooler, another story)

IMHO you need to find as much CFM with as much surface area as you can, and if it can be done with multiple circuits, even better.

Maybe look at a water to air intercooler for those go-fast or pulling days, just dump ice in and feel the power, well till the ice melts and the water becomes steam... OH Crap the motor just blew, No idiot the waterbox intercooler OP valve just popped. I just about **** myself when I saw that for the first time, talk about being a newbie dummy.

 

Thanks for the info NYDiver, thats the kind of technical stuff I was looking for...I still haven't had much time to do anymore investigating, wife got a job down in Boise we now we are moving in a month, so my build process has ceased until I get settled down in Boise...anyway I am going to replace up-pipes next, then I will be looking into a IC...and then 238/150 injectors...that should hold me for awhile unless I start having fuel/oil pressure issues.

 

Congrats on the wifes new job Darrin. Too bad we didnt get a chance to meet before i deployed. Maybe at an event sometime down there. Good luck with everything

 

Yeah same here, I really hate leaving North Idaho. Thank you for your service and be safe, hopefully we will meet at one of those events in the future.