RE Amemiya top mount intercooler
 

Does anyone have one of these who can give some feedback? It looks a lot more efficient than the stock unit, and I think it might allow for more responsiveness than a FMIC because there's less plumbing for it to go through. Of course I'm a n00b so I dunno...

Of course there will be alot less lag then an FMIC but any TMIC will get heatsoak, especially from our hot engines. FMIC or V-mount is the only way to go. If you could find a way to get rid of the heat soak on the TMIC then you'd be a god among men.

problem with top mounts are they heat soak easily. I also beleive aftermarket top mounts for FCs are tough to find. You can have a fmic, with minimal piping.

Less heat soak, less piping = V-Mount.

V-Mount = alot of modifcations. Do a search for it and you'll see what I mean. I think J-Rat is doing a V-Mount project.

Greddy 32R FTW

True. But if you really want to do it, you'll get it done.

Hopefully I'll have my v-mount done around August. I'll make sure to take plenty of pics. ;)

greddy system is such a large front mount, you really dont need something that drastic. V mount is ideal, or a smaller front mount, with air tight ducting, and if street driven, a very good efan and uprgaded radiator

The problem I've seen alot with FMIC is that the coolant starts overheating alot easier even with a koyo radiator. Most have to remove the AC to assist with this problem.

I didnt notice any real decrease of responsiveness when I went to a FMIC. As long as you keep the tray that runs under the engine, seal off the top from the front bumper to the radiator, & keep the stock clutch fan & shroud you shouldnt have any overheating issues.

Where are the pics? Not that I'd suggest wasting your money on one, I'm just curious.

I didnt have any FMIC overheating related issues when I made the change. But I also make sure that I have coolant in my radiator(not water), I flush my cooling system periodically, I have a pretty nice e-fan that I scored from a buddy.

well if you have a race car, or you live in a non freezing enviroment, pure distilled water is great to run. some of the cars at sebring have to run only water, which is better to disapate heat. I would but since I live in the north, I add alittle coolant

It's also great for turning the insides of your engine into rust and ruining you water pump bearings! Bad, bad advice. :nono:

What they do in race car cooling systems is totally irrelevant for a street engine.

I'd like to turn one into a W2A....

This is it

Anyone else think it looks like a polished up stock TMIC? Or maybe it's just me.

I was gonna say the same thing except its a lil wider.

thats just a stock someone welded another section onto.

i was wondering something. a TMIC gets heatsoak from the actual engine? or from the engine bay being bottled shut? i was thinkin that maybe you can surround the top mount with some sort of airbox that keeps heat out?

If you are not running high boost and other serious mods that would cause your engine to run hotter than normal, the stock tmic is suffice.

Alot of people are being misconstrude because of the intrercooer issues. I run a e-fan and koyo aluminum rad and i do use distilled water with a half mix of antifreeze on a stock turbo with only a mild WG port.

I noticed good drops especially in the Florida humidity. That being said, i would highly recomend spending your money on a e-fan that would cool you r engine significantly over the OEM unit. YOu will be surprised at the difference. But thats just my opinion.

That pic is off the RE-Amemiya website, so that someone happens to be the people who build some of the best RX-7s around. Which is why I posted this thread, to see if it's really any good. Would it be possible to insulate the bottom of the IC or the top of the engine if you will so that it isn't subject to heat soak?

Doesn't have anything to do with how great RE Amemiya is or not. TMIC is just junk in the first place because of the heat soak. Doesn't matter that your reducing boost lag when the air temp is 200+

Just outa curiosity, what is the price on this intercooler? I've never actually seen a site that sells thiem.

It doesn't make any difference who made it, it's still a just stock intercooler that's had half the core from another stock intercooler welded onto the side of it. It would reduce the pressure drop compared to an unmodified one but it wouldn't cool any better because the added part of the core would be getting zero airflow from the hood scoop. It would make a good FMIC though. In fact that's almost exactly what I'm in the process of doing...

I've insulated the shield on the underside if the IC but it didn't appear to do much for measured intake temps.

Both. The IC is heated by both radiant heat from the engine and by air heated by the engine rising up through the IC. Hot air rises and the hood scoop provides a perfect chimney for that hot air to escape.

And when you're moving how is the air from the hood scoop going to get out? There's already a shield under the stock IC, probably put there to lessen the effects on heat soak and deflect rainwater away from the engine.

42,000yen, or $380USD. That's off their website, but expect to pay much more if you get it from a company in the U.S... Rotary Extreme and Cork Sport should be able to get them. Out of curiosity, why do you have a Steyr AUG as your Avatar, and why is your name AUGieDogie?

It is obviously just a1 and a 1/2 Intercooler, It had been discussed before I believe on here and other forums. I am not going to disagree with anyone, but I will say that a few people had interesting things to say that allowed the intercooler to run in stock location with more boost than the stock TMIC without overflowing it because of its large size, however I do not know if they removed or "remade" the stock rubber gromet on the uderside of the hood.

- Chris

im having a little trouble finding this on RE's website, and as far as i know they use FMIC's on their cars. (at least on the track cars ive seen pics of)
nm found it, guess theirs a reason they call it the 1.5 kit lol. since it is another .5 welded on.

I ran water only in my CRX every summer. I drained a little and added antifreeze (not coolant) to the mix. Distilled water isn't going cause massive rust (unless you have a lot of iron prevalent in the motor. Anything that is all aluminum won't rust at all, but if you use tap water that has minerals in it, it'll gunk up quick. I think I read somewhere that there is this oil you can add in there to help lubricate the system as well.

In closing, I never had any rust or water pump problems. Some cars can actually do that.

heatsoak might take away some power but at least it doesnt affect cooling issues which imo is something that is more important to watch then power... i dont care if my car makes 10whp less than it should as long as it is still cooling efficiently and wont overheat my engine because then id be making 0whp... dont worry about heatsoak for now until you are ready for a good fmic setup or if you want to keep the tmic maybe think of a water cooling system

There is a way to have the best of both worlds, but its very very very rare to find.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h3...e/P1010066.jpg

Its the old HKS top mount that they discontinued. This picture was pre-microtech, so I still had all my vaccum rack installed. After I got the microtech, I installed an 8" Derale electric fan underneath the intercooler (I'll get new pics) and it never heatsoaks while the fan is on (Usually all the time). Its the only top-mount that I've found you can put a fan under, the only downside is that I had to take about 13 square inches of material from the underside of the hood. With that up top though, and no AC condenser in front, my water temps never go above 180 degrees.

I know heatsoak has been dissused many times but I have some data that may ne of interest. I spent a lot of time making sure that my TMIC fit tightly against the hood rubber and that the rubber seal had the stiffening wire installed correctly. I attached a IQ tecd data logger with 5 calibrated thermocouples. One is above the IC (ambient) measures the air coming in, one is in the IC core (core). One is after the tubro (pre-ic) and the other in the hose leaving the IC (intak). Then I did several full throttle runs and logged the data. The x axis is time (seconds) and the y is the temp. If you do the math on IC efficency- You can see this stocker is close to 70-80 efficent. When the car is moving heatsoak seems a non issue. Picture 1 is raw data and picture 2 is the same data with some smoothing applied.

If you can't get something like that made for under US$100 then you're not trying hard enough. Buying one from RE-A would be financial lunacy.

In automotive terms, antifreeze and coolant are the same thing. You can't get just one or the other. These products also have additives specifically for lubricating the water pump bearings. Running without proper coolant not only causes corrosion (there is iron in a rotary) but also shortens the life of the water pump bearings.

If you're going to dispense dodgy advice, you should know the downsides as well.

Do you realize that high intake temps lower resistance to detonation? A heat-soaked TMIC causes scary-high intake temps. If you crack an apex seal your cooling system is the least of your worries...

I got really interested in the idea of fan-assisting the stock TMIC until I realised it was impossible to fit a fan under it. An IC like yours would probably be pretty easy to custom-make from a suitable core, and would be a good upgrade over stock, but I still think the time and money would be better spent on a FMIC. It will always cool better just because of the much larger airflow through it, and I'm convinced most FMIC-related cooling issues are caused by little to no effort being put into making sure all incoming air goes through the radiator. That's a nice set-up though, post some more pics if you have any.

You should check your thermostat then, since I presume that means the temps are normally lower than that. The thermostat shouldn't open until 180degF and in normal driving sit at 180-190degF.

That is really awesome data and it's great to see someone doing real world testing on the stock intercooler BUT, you need to do the same testing at low speeds and when stationary to show exactly had bad the heat soak problem is. I have temp display showing post-IC temps and even sitting for at a red light sees the temp climbing rapidly. Park up for ten minutes and when you restart you can get intake temps 40degC (70degF) above ambient. Your data shows the air above the intercooler ~10degC above ambient at the start and dropping to 1-2degC above ambient as you accelerate. This indicates the heat was rising up through the core at low speed, which is exactly what causes heat soak.

IC data
 

Addition to my first post ---- I made a mistake when I described the data. The x axis is time in seconds so the first graph is 0-600 seconds A ten minute run that has "normal driving events" Some boost but I can't stay in it long on public roads. The short spikes are quick little acelerations. Maybe 30 to 70mph. Didn't log that data so I'm not sure. The time constant of the tiny thermocouples is so small that they catch the quick temperature changes. The second graph was a subset from 170-290 seconds. I wanted to do some calulations with this data and thats why I made a smaller set. I do think heat soak happens when the car is not moving. The big graph clearly shows the temp climbing when the car is sitting after the drive. The intresting thing to me was that when the car was moving there was cooling going on. I use my car for road race style track events so I am only under sustained boost when I 'm moving along unlike a quarter mile event. I agree that a FMIC is the best solution but it is not trival to install one. So far moderate boost and a rich mixture has worked for me.

What about a small electric fan mounted on the firewall blowing the air out under the tmic? Your not obstructing the flow of air that is coming through the tmic when moving and the fan is blowing the hot air while the car is stationary?

If you've ever looked at the underside of a stock IC you'll know why that wouldn't do a thing...

You're right. :(

I wonder how much modding it would take to fit a Subaru STI or Celica GT4 I/C up there...

Firstly i am very sorry for the Ancient thread revival, BUT... As you can see i have done a search instead of just starting a new thread!
I am interested in getting a uprated TMIC for my FC I've only found 1 place selling one and its an RE:A one - which is very very expensive and i've researched them and it seems you need a aftermarket bonnet/hood for them to be affective. I've heard of ARC copies and now i've seen this HKS one which as mentioned is very rare! Anyone know anywhere else that sells the ARC copies? I don't want to go FMIC or VMIC just yet.

Also i've heard that a starlet top mount intercooler will fit the FC as well and there are a few aftermarket top mount coolers available for starlets? Any one know if this is true?

:scratch:

Im running an ARC topmount, but im not sure if it is worth the trouble trying to find one

https://imagehost.vendio.com/a/35045...g_6E5Q___1.JPG


http://i673.photobucket.com/albums/v...19005259s0.jpg

It may flow a little better than stock, but i do not believe it cools as well. on the stock intercooler, the air has to take two 90deg bends through the end tanks. the tubes in the ARC are oriented inlinel, the flow is just straight through and the stock TB elbow is replaced with slightly larger diameter. But on the cooling aspect, it is the about the same if not worse according to my logs. and you lose the cool "rotary turbo" emblem

This is the thing, it seems trying to find one is difficult! Even the 'arc copies' are rare!