Larger IC installed!

91RedSpiritRT said:

hard to notice the power increase right now...but im sure its there

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91RedSpiritRT said:

installed my new IC this morning. bumper removal is fairly simple, the worst part were the hoses. Once the stage 2 wastegate and Stage 1 computer are in I should see how much balls this thing has! :thumb:

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HotRodDodge said:

Ya from what i have heard our stock cooler will work well up to 400+ hp

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The Pope said:

LMAO, you "can" use it I suppose. But I have 2 cars local here I've worked on. 1 has a stage 1 the other is stock computer, neither has a boost controller. They both have the big spearco. Clay with no other changes went from a 13.39 best to a 12.71 best with the same 60ft time. My brother went 12.74 with stock boost and computer with his big Spearco. Don't kid yourself about how much improvement a big IC is on a car with a tiny turbo spitting out red hot air.

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HotRodDodge said:

WOW, i didn't know that, from what i have heard the stocker was more then enough, thanks for the info.

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Blackbird-R/T said:

I did two sets of runs yesterday that were a couple hours apart. My car was the “FrankeNeon” with the front end all torn off in the parking lot.

Powertrain mods were Stage 2.
That's it.
All runs were on 91 octane Chevron on DAB 3.


Best of first runs was 235hp / 272ft-lbs.
I took the 16k-mile stock paper filter out of the box and closed it back up. I told Dave to get on it a little harder on the last run and it helped a lot. I’ve noticed I get anywhere from 2-3 more pounds of boost on the street when I’m pushing it. Easing into third gear on the dyno and it appears that the computer isn’t giving full boost.


Before the second run I threw on the CCA large FMIC.

Best of second runs was 245hp / 278ft-lbs.
The paper filter was back in the airbox for this one. I'll probably make another post in regards to the FMIC and the temp differences I saw with it.



Before I did each set of runs I set the car on low boost (DAB 1) and drove a few miles doing some 3rd and 4th gear WOT runs, stopped the car, restarted it, and repeated three times. I figured this would be the most accurate way to get the computer to give consistent results. Most people don’t reset the computer every time they go to WOT on the street anyway (well there might be a couple of you on the forums that do that )



Later in the day I started plugging my scan tool into a lot of other cars and was primarily watching the charge temps at the throttle body and also keeping an eye on timing. In general, the pulling timing issue didn’t seem to be as bad as what everyone has hypothesized. On my car, at WOT starting at about 3k rpms I was seeing around 17 degrees spark advance and it stayed around 20-22 degrees through the run up until redline, where it topped out at 24 degrees. A couple other S2 cars without toys also running 91 octane were almost identical with similar dyno numbers. A couple Stage 1 cars were also running very similar timing. What was very interesting were the ones running 100 octane weren’t a lot different. Next dyno day I’ll try to get a printer for my scan tool and do some logging of people’s mods and what they did.

Stock, my car put down 225hp and around the low 240’s for torque, so I’m not too disappointed. Exhaust is probably going to be next and I’ll probably put on the Iceman intake I’ve got. With exhaust and intake I’d hope to be around what most the other S2 cars were doing on pump gas.

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Blackbird-R/T said:

As I mentioned in another post on the SoCal forums, I finally got the CCA FMIC on my car during the last dyno day. The only power modifications on the car at the time was Stage 2 and I was running 91 octane on DAB #3.

Best before numbers with only S2 were 235hp/272ft-lbs. After install a couple hours later they were 245hp/278ft-lbs. Before each time on the dyno I set the boost on setting 1 (around stock levels) and did a few WOT runs while driving around, stopped and restarted the car, and then repeated that three times. Comparing all my runs, it averaged about a 10 horsepower difference, and maybe 5-8 ft-lbs of torque. I'll see if I can get them scanned, but the torque curve and horsepower to some extent was quite a bit broader and smoother with the larger IC. The air-fuel also "leaned" out a little to between 10 and 11:1 from sub-10:1's on the first runs.

That's all nice and all, but isn't the best improvements I saw. I spent a good portion of my time later in the day hooking up my scan tool to quite a few cars, including another SRT-4 with the CCA intercooler. I was mostly looking at timing, as well as the intake charge temp just before the throttle body, which is what I'll talk about here.

My first set of runs were made with the stock intercooler and the front bumper cover off. The first run wasn't too bad, with temps around 105 at idle and up to high 120’s by redline. There wasn't much time between pulls, and by the second and third one it was only getting back down to around 115-120 degrees, and was climbing to about 150 at redline.

The other cars with stock intercoolers were all fairly consistent and similar. It didn't really matter what mods were on the car (they were all stock turbo cars with a mix of S0, S1, and S2) but the first run wouldn't start out too bad, but by redline they were up to 150 degrees. On the final runs it was pretty common to see intake charge temps of 160-170 at the throttle body. I'd contribute my slightly lower temps compared to the others to the fact that more air was getting to mine with the cover off (no cars including mine were running the IC sprayer).

After I put the CCA intercooler on I reassembled the front end so I could drive the car. (I was trying to think of good excuses I could give the CHP as to why I was driving on the highway with only the hood and fenders and the turn signal bulb & wires hanging in the wind ). This was a couple hours after the first set of runs and it had cooled off a little outside, but was still hot in the dyno bay. The first run at idle started off at 98 degrees and only went up a couple degrees by redline. By the third run it was still not heat soaking, and stayed right around low 100’s for all the runs. The second CCA car I watched was almost identical.


There are a few points that I was able to take from this. With the minimal airflow provided by a fan compared to driving on the street, the larger intercooler would not heat soak and remained extremely efficient at cooling the intake charge in back-to-back runs. It’s possible you might be able to get it heat soaked on the dyno, but it would have took considerably more runs. The stock intercooler did fair on the first runs, but temps just shot up after that and they never cooled back down.

And that might be one of the biggest disadvantages of the stock cooler, at least on paper. I had also been watching the intake temps with the stock IC out on the street and it does keep the intake charge reasonably close to the ambient temps (usually within 10-20 degrees) while at speed and doing a WOT pull. But say you’re at the track and finish your run. If the stock IC doesn’t get a chance to cool off or it heat soaks while idling around, it probably won’t cool the intake charge until you start off again on the next run. The question is; how would that effect the first part of that run? It’s apparently going to take some time to cool off, but how far would you have to travel down the track before that happens, and what's the computer going to do because of it (less timing, etc.).

Without more testing, the larger IC may also heat soak while sitting around. Because of the larger surface area though, I’d expect it to cool off quicker once you get moving or if you turned on the radiator fan. Last night on the drive home I was watching the charge temps after sitting in a traffic for a while and it didn’t seem to go up much and was always back close to ambient temps once moving.

A few last things to note about the larger intercooler. I haven’t noticed any major changes in water temps with the bigger IC. After watching coolant temps on the scan tool, the factory gauge is pretty accurate and quick acting compared to a lot of the dummy gauges on most new cars. I also saw an increase in vacuum while decelerating on the street. Before my car would pull about 22 inches when slowing on level ground while in higher gears. It’s now consistently pulling about 24 inches.

Last, since it’s of the least importance when judging performance changes are my personal observation/opinions. Throttle response seems about the same and is pretty crisp. At WOT on hot days, high elevations, going up hill, and on 91 octane, it appears to pull harder and I’m not getting any miss or possible detonation that I’ve felt before (my scan tool won’t show what the knock sensor is reading, so I can’t verify this). I would’ve liked to done more tests comparing the outlet AND inlet temps at the IC, as well as pressure drops, but you can extrapolate a lot of it from what I was seeing.

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Goes Like Hell said:

The reduced temps did not cause the pressure drop. The air pumped into the inlet port was not superheated. It was a flow test only. Heat was not measured.

AGPs race intercooler has a lower pressure drop than the stock one and it’s 3 times larger than a stock intercooler.

That would make the following statement, false.
"The fact is that while you may see a larger pressure drop then stock (normal when going to a larger intercooler on ANY car)"

The deltaP information that I gave is correct. The cooler charge air may have produced more of a gain for those modifications and at that flow rate, but once you really start pumping the air thru there and your deltaP starts to increase, anything over 3psig drop and the intercooler is deemed unsuitable for the job. Next thing you know, you have to make another intercooler purchase.

I can tell you right now. That intercooler will not suitably support even 450hp in terms of presure drop..

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