I tried looking through the intercooler and it seemed to be a much different design then the inside of the DSM intercooler I had on my neon. The DSM intercooler had rectangular tubes from one end tand to the other with cooling fins between on the outside. This intercooler is the same except it has cooling fins inside the rectangular tubes as well as on the outside. IMO this is probably why the flow is so much less, but that mesh would certainly increase the cooling capacity of the intercooler at the cost of air flow. Basically the same trade off that occurs with a much larger intercooler. Does this make sense? BTW finished taking apart the turbo and cleaning it out. The new bearings and seals should be here in a few days. Does anyone have a drawing of the inside of a T3 turbo because I believe this one is missing a seal on the air side.

ATX MTX swap, rear drum disc swap, drilled rotors, ported intake, optim throttle body, CAI, 7.5L MAF, adj. fuel regulator, longtube headers, underdrive pulley, no EGR, low inpedence bigger injectors, 2002 Focus Swap