Intercooler experience

[cleffe]

I've found a lot of threads summarizing which aftermarket ICs are available, but not much regarding people's actual experience with them. Can someone who has installed and spent some time driving with an aftermarket IC post their experience? Do you notice any benefit after a few hard pulls compared to the stock IC, or is there not much noticeable difference?

Sponsored

 

[superj]

@Goosetuned just went over intercoolers in a post he did. search under his name and it should pop up

 

[Tallonh]

put the cvfab intercooler and charge pipes in mine from the bronco kit. Had to remove the lower shutter took about 3hrs to install. Got some of my mileage back after I did the level, bigger and heavier tires. As for hard pulls and such without tuning idk how much of a difference it would make but I was mainly chasing mpg's anyway. Id say pending what gear the trans is searching for (the tuning on these is mediocre at best) feels like maybe a little more boost lag from no throttle. Also im in the 2.7L v6 that things pretty quick anyway.

 

[CrushTon207]

I installed the Cobb last week. I am going to make a more detailed post at some point but here are a few initial observations.

With the Cobb in general driving Air Charge Temps (ACT) are around 10F higher than Intake AIr Temps (IAT) whereas with the stock intercooler I was generally seeing a 20F difference. I have yet to be able to see 130F ACT in any situation with the Cobb whereas I could get to 130F with the stock intercooler with two hard pulls in a row.

Its still spring where I live and ambient temps have been pretty low, 40F to 70F, so I haven't seen how it will perform as ambient temperatures get up to what I would call hot. I do have concerns about low speed cooling as temperatures rise.

The Cobb intercooler does not utilize the rear shutter assembly. If you haven't looked at how that works you should. The rear shutter assembly includes a seal that seals the rear of the intercooler to the fans and allows the fans to suck air through the intercooler. I would imagine this would help cool things down at low speeds in high ambient temps.

The Cobb intercooler does seem to cool down acceptably quick after it does warm up even at 20 to 30 mph which is something I was concerned about. It should be noted that I was surprised at how little the ranger actually gets into boost under normal driving conditions which should help keep things cooler with either intercooler, although I was also surprised at how much vacuum this truck makes when off throttle. My theory is that under vacuum no air is passing through the intake so IATs and therefore ACts will rise from engine bay heat until you get back on the throttle a little bit and start to draw fresh air through the system.

I will continue to observe as things get warmer here and report back if I see issues.

Please not that all of the info I have provided is anecdotal and I have not done any structured testing.

 

[MeBEEF]

I installed the Cobb last week. I am going to make a more detailed post at some point but here are a few initial observations.

With the Cobb in general driving Air Charge Temps (ACT) are around 10F higher than Intake AIr Temps (IAT) whereas with the stock intercooler I was generally seeing a 20F difference. I have yet to be able to see 130F ACT in any situation with the Cobb whereas I could get to 130F with the stock intercooler with two hard pulls in a row.

Its still spring where I live and ambient temps have been pretty low, 40F to 70F, so I haven't seen how it will perform as ambient temperatures get up to what I would call hot. I do have concerns about low speed cooling as temperatures rise.

The Cobb intercooler does not utilize the rear shutter assembly. If you haven't looked at how that works you should. The rear shutter assembly includes a seal that seals the rear of the intercooler to the fans and allows the fans to suck air through the intercooler. I would imagine this would help cool things down at low speeds in high ambient temps.

The Cobb intercooler does seem to cool down acceptably quick after it does warm up even at 20 to 30 mph which is something I was concerned about. It should be noted that I was surprised at how little the ranger actually gets into boost under normal driving conditions which should help keep things cooler with either intercooler, although I was also surprised at how much vacuum this truck makes when off throttle. My theory is that under vacuum no air is passing through the intake so IATs and therefore ACts will rise from engine bay heat until you get back on the throttle a little bit and start to draw fresh air through the system.

I will continue to observe as things get warmer here and report back if I see issues.

Please not that all of the info I have provided is anecdotal and I have not done any structured testing.

So it is performing WORSE than the stock? Did I read you right? In any driving situation I'd expect it to perform better, this is interesting. If the intercooler is bigger it could be soaking in engine bay heat. I think the stock intercooler has some sort of a plastic frame around it? perhaps this is it. But yeah when you're on the throttle this would go away.

Maybe evaluate your Cobb and see if you can add some insulation of some kind around it. I am sure something like home depot R7 insulation would work, thin.

Very interesting thanks for sharing. I am interested in an AIC as well but not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze.

 

[CrushTon207]

So it is performing WORSE than the stock? Did I read you right? In any driving situation I'd expect it to perform better, this is interesting. If the intercooler is bigger it could be soaking in engine bay heat. I think the stock intercooler has some sort of a plastic frame around it? perhaps this is it. But yeah when you're on the throttle this would go away.

Maybe evaluate your Cobb and see if you can add some insulation of some kind around it. I am sure something like home depot R7 insulation would work, thin.

Very interesting thanks for sharing. I am interested in an AIC as well but not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze.

The Cobb intercooler is cooling the air more than stock so far by my non scientific observations. The stock intercooler ACTs were generally 20F higher than IATs. The Cobb intercooler ACTs are generally 10F higher than IATS.

IATs are the temperature of the air near the intake. Generally just before or after the filter. ACTs are the temperature of the charged air post turbo and intercooler.

I used that delta of temperatures as my measure because ACTs vary so much depending on so many factors that it's hard to gather meaningful data from ACTs alone.

I can't speak to the efficiency or flow at all as I don't have any way to measure that.

 

[Blue_Raptor]

He did provide info, but I think there is still more beneficial info that can be provided by other users, and this was something I had posted about previously. Personally I feel the most useful bit

The Cobb intercooler is cooling the air more than stock so far by my non scientific observations. The stock intercooler ACTs were generally 20F higher than IATs. The Cobb intercooler ACTs are generally 10F higher than IATS.

IATs are the temperature of the air near the intake. Generally just before or after the filter. ACTs are the temperature of the charged air post turbo and intercooler.

I used that delta of temperatures as my measure because ACTs vary so much depending on so many factors that it's hard to gather meaningful data from ACTs alone.

I can't speak to the efficiency or flow at all as I don't have any way to measure that.

For this reason, I think a better measure is seeing what the charge temps are related to ambient temp. How close to ambient temps is the IC keeping the charge air? Because ambient is your floor (or ceiling depending on how you look at it).

Also, I still dont know how much effect the active shutters have on charge air temps. I got my RR in January, and with ambient temps in the 40s-50s my charge air temp would be in the 80s-90s on the freeway just on cruise control (meaning engine fully warmed up and IC not heat soaked).

So, do any of the aftermarket IC's keep the charge temps close to ambient while still retaining the active shutters?

As an example, my previous car was a Fiesta ST with a CPe IC and a Cobb accessport (with a tune) which I used for the gauges. That IC kept the charge temp within 10 deg of ambient, but of course that car does not have active shutters.

So for me, if an aftermarket IC keeps the charge temps fairly close to ambient its worth looking at. And our trucks have all the gauges to monitor this from stock (doesnt require an accessport to see charge temp).

Sponsored