Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Forced Induction intercooler vs. more boost

This was my first intercooler. Cost me $ 25 at a pick and pull. It was the only one my dad could find. It's off some kind of turbo dodge.


It was origionally mounted inside the engine bay in a poor location but the car did 146whp at 5/6psi with no audible detonation on the stock ECU. I eventually mounted the intercooler in the front bumper for better cooling.

This is my current intercooler. It cost me around $200 to buy it and modify it. It's off a mitsubishi starion.

It's also mounted in the front bumper. There have been times I've come back from a drive and felt the end tanks of the new cooler and the intake side is hot and the outlet side is cool too the touch.

Here's both side by side.

Both these kinds of intercoolers can be had fairly cheaply if you know where to look, but I wouldn't recommend the dodge one unless you bought several of them and welded them together. Still the new one is smaller than I'd like but it will take me too the power I want and for more power I'm thinking of a homemade N-ter Cooler setup.

So, in conclusion you don't have to spend $800 for a intercooling solution. And if your compression is as high as you say it is, I wouldn't go FI even with intercooling unless you get some low comp pistons and forged rods. Cause your fuel& timing managment will be the biggest sticking point and you'll wind up spending well over $800 just on that. There's a guy on the Focus forums running 8psi non-intercooled on the stock block and he autocrosses regularly with no problems but he's using a $2000 pectel unit for engine managment.

My 2 cents. This is from somebody with the only daily driven Zetec turbo, designed and built from scratch, on the CDW27 platform, that I know of.

Well if there really are simple coolers I can get in the under-$200 range, then I suppose I'll go ahead and include one. It just wasn't making sense to me to have the cooler be the most expensive single part in the system. (The compressor itself looks like it might be around $650, though I haven't really pinned down a source yet.)

Originally posted by Seawulf:

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And if your compression is as high as you say it is, I wouldn't go FI even with intercooling unless you get some low comp pistons and forged rods.

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I kind of figure I'll have to do something about the compression. Bring it down to stock at least. Ever since it was raised the thing has actually had less power than stock, though I don't know if that's the reason. Maybe I should try a thick gasket, just as an experiment, before I start on any other major mods. It doesn't have to stay in all that many miles, so even if thick gaskets are not durable over the long term, it might be worth trying.

No way I'd spend $800 on an intercooler. Most I'd spend is $400 new. My original turbo cost me $100 shipped. My new one cost me $250 shipped. Both used from Ebay. You can find a lot of good bargains there.

The Air/Water intercooler is overkill in my opinion, but with the higher compression ratio of the SVT V6 it makes sense on that application.

As for thicker gasket, the guys on the Focus forums say it's not a good idea cause it get's rid of the "squish area" or "quench area". Not sure what that means, but they say that a thicker gasket will actually cause it to detonate easier.

Dude, there are some things that you obviously aren't aware of. I said approximately $800 as I am not for sure on the price, but its close. Anyway, that $ will buy you the air-water intercooler, the heat exchanger, the reservoir and all the hose, fittings and clamps.
On our cars there is literally no room to put it anywhere but in the currently used location, right in front of the throttle body. This requires special angles on the tanks and you can't just go and buy one. It will always be custom made for our cars. There is no room for an air-air intercooler on the SVT, period unless you have a different front bumper setup and probably hood setup as well; but stock there is no room for anything else. Several of us tried it and this was the only reasonable way to do it.
Taking all that into consideration, the price is about right for the the security and performance that this intercooler gives on a boosted 10:1 motor.

warmonger

The zetec doesn't have the same room problems that a SVT does. Like, I could probably put an air-air intercooler down low between the tranny and the firewall, and get fairly cool air when moving. (Of course, I'd have to watch out for loose rocks.)

I do wish I knew what a "squish area" was...

I wonder what would happen if you put a steel shim between two stock head gaskets. I mean, if one stock head gasket is good, two must be even better.

Paul,

No offense, but our serious lack of understanding the dynamics of combustion and how the various factors affect it, would lead me to say that you should trust someone more knowledgable than yourself to work on your forced induction setup. Unless you really want to blow up several engines in a very expensive trial and error process. Or at the very least multiple headgasket failures (heck, multiple even at the same time! )

If you learn about boost the hard way (like I did ), you might as well buy a five or six headgaskets right off the bat...eventually you will get quick enough to where a head gasket swap becomes like an oil change.

First thing I learned about cars: working on them is fun, being productive is fun, redoing something is a PITA!