Rolling road with Forge Motorsport Intercooler

Right guys. Although i really shouldnt have, i took my car for a power run on thursday. Naughty me.

Now it was the same one that done my power runs back in october.

Compared the results and it wasnt good.

Fuelling wasnt "as rich" as it was last time, now nearer 11afr.
Boost was holding better through the range due to no hole in the intercooler etc.

I/c temps were HIGHER than with the previous intercooler.

At redline they were 45C on this run with the Forge Intercooler and previously in Oct (obviously its colder ambient temperature now)it was 33c at redline. So not good.

Contacted Forge and sent off the power and temp graphs and they agreed that it wasnt as good.

This is the final answer to this.

"The evo6 intercooler that we supply is an uprated intercooler if fitted to an evo 6. We can only presume that when fitted to a Fiat Coupe it does not perform as well as the original one does under these circumstances and hence is not applicable for use with the Fiat Coupe."

They agreed to allow me to send it back for a full refund. So my other one was repaired on Thursday and now is ready to be re-fitted to the Coupe. Guy has said the intercooler will outlast the car!!

Fairly decent by Forge to accept it back but they did ask that i recommend that noone fits this intercooler to there coupe as its not gonna work as well as the original evo 6.

Ross

That's good service - nice to hear!

However, Forge need to look at ProAlloy's intercooler - Rob at Perfect Touch was very impressed, as he didn't see temps above 30 degrees, even when pulling 1.7 bar peak /1.4 at redline.

It would appear that Coupes can produce quite a bit of heat with the boost - what boost do EVOs typically run?

Could also be down to insufficient cooling on the rolling road, what size of fan(s) did they have?

If you went to AVA I hope they had better cooling than when I went there with my coupe years ago... they had a single, small fan about 12" and predictably intake temps were sky high (*never* saw the water temp so high as it was that day either), the ecu cut back boost and ignition timing and the results were poor. 2-3 mins back on the open road after leaving them and the car was flying again... wasn't impressed with their setup at all, but as I say it was a long time ago.

You might find on the road the intercooler is performing just fine.

Well it was the same rolling road setup both times so regardless of the fan size the only change was the intercooler.

@ Nigel : Evos run around 19-20psi.

Im going to put the original intercooler back on and see what i get in comparison. Thing is....

Running 1 psi higher at redline, with temps 12c higher, it made 276bhp at the wheels.

So imagine what i would have got if i had normal temps!!

@Graham : I know how u feel about ava but i used them for comparison. Next rolling road im going to get done will be at Dastek hopefully.

Ross

Well at least you didn't loose power, same as last time irc 276bhp You may find that running running 1psi (0.7bar) extra at redline increased the temps slightly as the turbo will be less efficient. The fuelling sounds better with 11 afr, not too far off where you want to be at high boost/high rpms.

Nah i had 284bhp at the wheels last time runing 16.9 psi.

Time before that i had 18.2 psi at redline but only got 279bhp. But that was with a dodgy intercooler/thermostat aswell.

So i dunno what to take from that. The intercooler is definately a contrubuting factor.

Unichip is the way ahead but im defo changing the intercooler back. The guy that repaired the intercooler said its the best one hes seen, in terms of design inside.

Ross

Sorry it was 279bhp @ 6000rpm running 1.36bar on the graph you gave me and 275bhp @ 7000rpm running 1.14bar. Did you know you ran 1.58bar midrange, you want to be careful there Ross

If you consider redline to be where the limiter kicks i.e 6800rpm+ (depending on chip) then 1.15bar is about the max you would want to flow!! Running 1.36 bar at 6000rpm is pushing it on the 28R with standard pistons and 1.6 bar midrange... well it's a fair bit! You will often find that reducing the boost can give the same or more power because the turbo is more efficient i.e. less heat, better airflow. Do you have your new graph to compare?

That was the first one, there was a second graph that has 284bhp running less boost. I did realise i was running too much boost but that was down to the way the guy configured it. Said he had configured it to 1.4-1.45 bar. But he hadnt.

I have since changed this and the new graph shows 1.4 bar midrange with 17.9psi redline which i work out as ... 1.2bar.

Ross

p.s. yes i know i need a unichip with boost module!

1.2 bar over 6000rpm is perfect

Yeh anno. Barbz drummed that into my head. But the temps isnt. So although i was running higher boost on my 276 bhp at 45c, the same boost with lower temps should provide better results?

Ross

P.s. I got 319bhp on the maha dynometer on my last run but it was with the old intercooler and dodgy thermostat.

So that should be improved if i was to go back.

Unichip next year!

Ross

Just as an update, i've changed back to my fully repaired and pressure tested. Immediate difference when it was refitted and noticed that boost wasnt fluctuating as much either. Definate difference.

Ross

I guess forge must know their intercooler still has problems despite the redesign.

They know now.

Could someone create a sticky with this info? So that other people in the future dont make the same mistake.

Ross

sorry i missed this ross, but it is a known fact that there is no better intercooler for the dimensions than the standard mitsubishi evo vi intercooler,it dont matter who makes it forge, pace, whoever mitsubishi invested allot of money when designing the intercoolers the only way to gain performance over the standard tube and finn design is to go bigger, if it's any help there is a evo vi intecooler for sale on mlr he wants 150 for it but no one is interested.

Total bargain at £150.

Ross

Surely the later Evos have more efficient intercoolers? Or are they also larger aswell? (Too large to fit a coop?)

...

They are larger, but also require more modification to fit to your coupe. Also the forge one was a larger intercooler (not by much ) and in the end it felt sluggish and lack lustre in comparison with the smaller one. Probably more laggy.

Ross