Stainless or alloy?

Was gonna make it out of alloy for better heat transfer, mate said it wouldn't make a difference. Basically would just use alloy anyway, but I will have to order mandrel bends from down south where i can get stainless ones locally. So what do you guys think please give reasoning for which material you prefer.

 

I would think aluminum would be best. It has great heat transfer capability.

 

aluminum is much lighter.

 

Your mate is correct. George Spears (Spearco Intercoolers) is on record stating that there is no thermal benefit achieved by using aluminum alloy vs. carbon steel or stainless steel. Most people use aluminum alloy due to the lighter weight and typically lower cost. In addition to your particular logistics issue, the only advantage I can see in stainless steel is that I think polished stainless steel would look nicer on a show car.

In a perfect world you would probably want aluminum on the hot side and composite on the cold side. However, in the real world it really dosn't matter because straight wall tube has horrible heat transfer properties and the air velocity is really high in the tubing vs. the intercooler core.

 

Id just go with the stainless for pretty much all the reasons evil stated unless your **** about weight savings in which case id go with the aluminum.

 

Seems like stainless it is then, thanks guys

 

If you can weld aluminum, go with ALU because you will save a lot of weight. My current intercooler pipes are stainless and weigh 3x as much as a set of aluminum ones I just finished. But, aluminum is going to cost a lot more as the els are more expensive (even though the tubing is cheaper).