Stock Mount Intercooler Options....and why is Petit so $$$?
 

Starting a new build on an R2 and I have the opportunity to do it quite well. My last car (an R1) already had a PFS SMIC when I bought it and I stuck with it while I had the car. I'm wanting to go with a SMIC setup to keep the piping shorter in the interest of better engine response as long as the IATs are still good. I live in Texas and summer is quite hot and I plan to track the car a few times a year (ideally not when it's stupid hot though).

So I'm looking through ancient threads the Crypt Keeper has even long since forgotten about, and I've come up with a few but only 1 really appears to be an option.

PFS (Peter Farrell Supercars) This unit seems to be extremely hard to find (also needs the duct) and from what I remember, the outlets were placed a bit goofy.
Petit Cool Charge III Seems wonderful but is unbelievably expensive for what it is. I like that it comes with the duct and a fan to move air even when sitting still. I could add a fan like that to any SMIC though.
XS Power This SMIC is dangerously cheap but it looks like a decent unit. Can't find any data on this but at least it appears to be available. No idea what fitment is like and NO duct. Any idea if the Petit duct will fit?

I feel like I may already know the answer (Petit CCIII) but I just can't reconcile the price. Are there other options I've missed?

The reason there are so few stock mounts is they don't work. With the radiator discharge blowing directly onto the intercooler, it quickly heat soaks. Once the intercooler heats up it takes forever too cool back down and only so when constantly moving. Its a horribly flawed design from an engineering standpoint. That being said, the Pettit actually is a decent core but still suffers from heat soak issues. PFC is smaller and I agree, looks goofy. If you don't run their intake then you have a hole to cover in the ducting. The XS has no duct designed for it as far as I know and a stock mount intercooler with no ducting is even more useless. The only time I recommend a stock mount is for a mostly stock car running stock or near stock boost levels. The nicest ones in my opinion are the Auto EXE and RE Amemiya. In climates like Texas you really want a V mount. Greddy is the best kit on the market in my opinion and if you consider the costs of buying an intake, intercooler, and radiator separately, its really a no brainer. If you have some of these you can sell them. I've lived in Texas and the stock mounts never did well.

There really aren't that many. There are some Japanese options like the Blitz and the Knight Sports dual-pass SMIC but they are on the small side and are quite pricey. The Knight Sports IC is nice with their airbox, though.

All of Pettit's parts are overpriced for what they are. A lot of their pricing is still the way it was when these cars were young and parts cost substantially more for the new hot car on the block.

I have heard of people being happy with the XS Power IC's but they are kind of bobo. You can buy just the duct from Pettit also to duct a custom IC or the XS.

Dale

Thanks for the responses guys. I think I need some clarification on something though.

How does a true v-mount setup resist heat soaking better than a SMIC that has a proper duct and maybe even a small fan? I agree, a typical SMIC with no duct will just get hot air passed to it after it leaves the radiator; definitely not ideal. Most of that air won't even flow THROUGH the IC without a sealed duct. But with a proper duct, it's grabbing it's air from in front of the radiator. Placement doesn't seem to be the difference since a SMIC and a VMIC are in nearly identical positions inside the engine bay, so I think I'm missing something here. :confused:

SMIC setup is stacked, the IC discharges hot air up into the IC/Engine bay. On a true VMIC the radiator discharges hot air down and the IC discharges up. The draw downward through the radiator lessens heat soak considerably.

V-mounts work and cool awesome (the car should have had it stock!) but it is a BIG job to install, especially if you want to keep the AC working. SMIC has the advantage of just dropping in and working, you may have to fiddle with the duct a bit or something but it's an easy afternoon of work as opposed to a solid weekend.

Of course, you can always go SMIC then if you want to go V-mount down the road you can probably sell the SMIC for close to what you paid for it. They do show up used quite often as well.

Dale

Interesting. When you say the radiator discharges down, is that down into the front lower plastic splash tray? How does that air actually escape the engine bay differently than a normal setup?

That's a good way to look at it.

And for anyone interested, I plan on going with an EFR7670 and hoping to make around 360ish at the wheels on 93 octane with a flex fuel setup so I can run E85 to get more top end when I'm feeling frisky.

Radiator is flipped over and mounted in the shave of a v with the intercooler and radiator coming together just in front of the motor. Air is evenly divided between the two with a properly ducted kit. Air comes in through the bottom of the intercooler and flows out the top over the motor. Air goes through the radiator and exits under the car.

Rotary performance has a nice SMIC that bolts up to the stock duct. This would be a good choice for someone staying twins, might become a restriction if going single.

https://rotaryperformance.com/collec...rp-intercooler

Since in ASP class I am not allowed to move the radiator or create a new air path around it by using a smaller or different shaped radiator I am thinking I would actually like to make a thin FMIC that fits where the AC condenser would have been right up on the radiator. The end tanks would be long and thin and pass between the radiator and the "frame rails". This would leave the old IC duct pass-through on the top of the radiator for the turbo inlet duct/airbox. This way at least when I run the radiator fan it would be pulling cool air through the IC core.

I wonder if you could just coat the end tanks in something that would minimize the heat transfer on the end tanks. Truth be told, I'm betting it's minimal already based on the amount of surface area the core has vs the end tanks, but still. Not sure if anything like that has been done before.

You'd do well with some thermal barrier (like swaintech white lightening, lizard skin thermal barrier, etc) and a heat shield or air guide. Gold foil is good for radiant heat (like a glowing manifold nearby) but not convection (like super-heated air moving past). And, the hot side end tank is likely expelling heat. So, have a think about where, and how, you limit heat transfer.

The Pettit Rolex Daytona 24 and Bathurst FD's (and even recent example like Ultimate Street Car Challenge) did/do exceptionally well with SMICs. Vmounts are great, but don't get drunk on the kool aid and hype.

The main advantage of SMICs is easy/stock-like packaging. The main drawback is a limited air-intake. Vmounts change the engine bay layout, but have much better cold air access.

For my recent rebuild, completed six weeks ago, I purchased a dual bank Australian U-type SMIC similar to the Knightsport U-Type cooler. It has a tight fitting air box that draws in only cold air from under the bumper when moving and I installed two 300cfm Spal puller fans on the engine side. This IC has low air flow efficiency of 89% (is less at higher flow) with fans running high speed (I have a two speed setup with a power resistor in place using a second fog light switch in the center dummy position on the center console in the car) determined with my testing on a table top. The IC is ceramic coated on the higher and lower end tanks and both sides with barrier-type ceramic coating rated for lower level heat efficiency in the 200-400 degree range. The fin or core area is coated in ceramic dispersant which increases the heat transfer of the core. My testing after coating showed IC efficiency rose to 91-92% at low air flow. I have a pre IC heat sensor I installed for testing the IC efficiency in real time. Also, all of my intake pipes and UIM and LIM are ceramic coated in barrier and dispersant depending on the location and need. After running my car at idle, parked, with the hood closed for 30 minutes the IC never got above 95 degrees F with a heat gun after opening the hood to shoot it. The ambient temperature that day was 60 degrees F. After a few tuning runs this last week, my AIT temp was 26 degrees at cruise with the outside temp of 13 degrees C. I also stopped the car for 5 minutes while I was messing with my laptop for tuning and when I restarted the car, the AIT temp(stock location) was 55 degrees C from heat soak with no air movement. I then took the car on another cruise at 55mph and within about 1.5 miles, the AIT temp returned to the 26 degrees C. Not bad at all. IMO, a stock SMIC can work very well if you don't allow it to heat soak (ceramic coating) and feed it only fresh outside air (tight air box feed from outside the engine bay and draw the air through it with puller fans, just like the Pettit IC's).
Mike


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I'm going through the process of installing a modified XS Power intercooler. They are a very large option for a SMIC, to the point of battery relocation. Its a rather tall unit as well, I'm going to be removing one row off the bottom so it will clear the hood using a mount made to sit on the stock SMIC crossbar. The size of the core seems to be adequate for running non sequential twins.

The cxracing v-mount is a good bang for buck. They work well and are under $1000 for the whole setup.

I had an XSEngineering smic on my first FD. I made a custom duct for it out of fiberglass. The temps were quite descent while cruising (much better than the stock smic) but the intercooler did heatsoak while the car was stationary. Heatsoak is a problem with all smic because they sit on top of the hot radiator and have hot air blown on them, like mentioned above. The only complaint that I had with the XSEngineering intercooler was the hot side turbo pipe, which did not line up 100% and hit my R1 strut bar. I would definitely use another one if I were looking for a very budget friendly smic option.

Heat soak is indeed a problem with SMIC's and that is why ceramic coating is so beneficial. I can put my hand flat on my coated SMIC immediately after raising the hood after being out for 30 minutes. Try that with any other SMIC or even V-mount IC and you will either burn your hand or have to remove it quickly. Ceramic coating works. Why do think all the professional racing teams from NASCAR to Indy use it.
Mike

Is the ceramic coating something you can apply yourself or is that more something you'd get done at a shop that does that sort of thing? I'm thinking a good coating on the end tanks combined with a small fan to constantly pull fresh air through the SMIC (via the duct) would be killer.

I had mine professionally done. There are many options for shops and coating brands. Most of coatings on my parts are from Tech Line (look them up on the internet) and one I believe from Cerakote, look them up too. I used a great shop out of Tampa ( I have no affiliation) and the pricing was very reasonable. I would think around $100-$110 for the IC. I did everything I could in a package including my turbos, turbo shields, all the intake piping, UIM, LIM, the downpipe, and the IC.I did the inside and outside, when appropriate, with barrier always inside and either barrier or dispersant outside. Call Scott at Engine Armor Performance Coatings in Tampa at (813) 685-8333 and ask him about your needs and tell him you want to do your IC similar to what "Mike the RX7 guy" did on his IC or even other pipes if you desire. We went through the entire layout of the RX7 piping and intakes over many phone calls with Scott to decide how to tackle the heat issues under our hoods.
Mike

In the process of modding my XSPower ic, I found out why it was a little on the heavy side. The end tanks are 3/16" thick! Might was well integrate it into the crash structure!
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...90b5aeb9c0.jpg

Holy damn....yeah those are thick!

Only 12 rows with the long horizontal layout isn't optimal.

Back in the day ASP found there was excessive pressure drop with their 18 row large SMIC and it performed marginally better than the shorter length medium IC that allows for the battery. They switched the large up to 23 smaller rows and the pressure drop decreased greatly.

I have the old 18 row...

Anyways, there is some calculations to be done as far as the available core entry area and core length.

This is where vertical flow IC can have lower pressure drop despite the kinked "S" bend inlet necessary.

That's a lot of thermal capacity. Could be good or bad thing. Would make avoiding heat soak more imperative.