I know it's been asked a lot, but it's tough to get a straight answer so I thought I would make the question more specific.

I'm looking to do a intercooler/radiator upgrade, and I don't know if I should go with a front mount or v-mount. Obviously my main concern is for power, but I also want to have a set-up that will keep my engine as cool as possible. So my main question is regardless of power, which would keep my engine cooler?

 

Obviously V mount will allow your car to run cooler as there's no heat-sink (intercooler) sitting in front of the radiator. The downside is that it will likely require re-locating the battery and some custom fabrication and plumbing. Not sure if anyone makes a 'V' mount "kit" for the FD, so costs usually go up.
The other positive for V mount is that you can usually get an IC as large as a Front mount, it doesn't require compromising the crash worthiness of your car (cutting bracing and bumper covers) and the IC isn't exposed to road debris.

 

Ok cool. Thanks for the input. A little while ago rx7store.net had a special where there were selling a radiator/intercooler V-mount kit. It came with all of the piping and brackets to do it. I checked recently and it's not there anymore. I wish I had jumped on it when I had the chance.

 

If you're car will be streeted and you're just looking for a little upgrade over the stock IC, there are also some decent SMIC choices...Blitz; Greddy, Pettit, PFS and some others that don't require relocating the battery but most will require aftermarket intakes. Search in the 3rd Gen Section for more info.
FWIW, I run a PFS Medium which is ~ 2. 5 larger than stock. Comes with a great duct and it's own intake (and K & N) box which I modded so it would scavange less air from the duct and source air from the nose. IAT's are really pretty decent at stock boost levels.

 

@sgtblue. I plan on boosting it up a little more than stock so I don't know if that would work. That's good to know though. Thanks.

 

Whether you're front mounted or V mounted, you need to make sure you're efficiently getting air across the coolers. Ducting will usually go a long way in making sure air is going through your coolers instead of around.
In the extreme case, hood venting to keep a high pressure zone from collecting behind the coolers can make a big difference too.
Either way you go, pay attention to the air path. A well set up front mount will be more efficient than a thrown together V-mount

 

Ok thanks. I think I'll probably end up going with V-mount because front mount requires a lot of modification to the front frame which I don't want to compromise.

 

V mount in my mind is definitely the way to go my FC is v mounted and when we changed it from standard cooling setup to v mount we gained 14hp atw and now my oil and water temps don't go much over 70 degrees Celsius on the race track or on the dyno (416hp atw).

The issue I had with the v mount with the FC was the oil cooler position I had to use 2 30 row oil coolers and place them either side of the front bumper but luckily the fd has a better setup with oil cooling and some come standard with twin oil coolers either side like I've done

 

I've had both on my FD and the difference was negligent. I was still running similar water temp but the air temp was around 4-5 deg cooler. What I did noticed was that once I parked a car after driving it to operating temp, the air temp comes down a lot quicker with V-Mount than it did with a FMIC. FWIW, I'm running a Defined Autoworks V-Mount and had a Greddy FMIC.

 

Yes due to the fact that the fd oil cooler/radiator standard setup is far superior to the FC I can believe that the difference is minor compared to mine but how much power did you have at the time of the change, modifications play a big part in cooling systems and how efficiently they perform I was running a gt3788r turbo which is oil and water cooled so everything (heat wise) sky rocketed when that was slapped on the side

 

As a sidebar.....dual oil coolers were not standard on th FD. They were only factory installed on the 'R' models.

 

Newbie to forum, I'm rebuilding my FC Tll, I've been debating if I should run rx8 twin oil coolers, over my stock oil cooler.... note im coming off a 400hp past build on pump and on the new build am going pure E85 at about 700hp??? Need your opinions guys.... Thanks

 

Jason at Rx7Store makes a v mount kit that consists of a modified koyo radiator and greddy intercooler which requires no ducting because of the size of the intercooler. It's a proven set up, he says it's so easy to install that it requires no instructions.
The downside of the kit is that if you'd like to keep your AC you'll have to custom fab a place for it and you'll need to relocate your battery (common with most large IC set ups)

 

@slow2k: I've actually been looking at the a lot. I called up and they said they don't have a fabricator at the moment to make the kit but they're looking for a new one. I may have to wait for that it go with another kit.

On a side note, has any one installed a V-mount kit and kept the AC in? How did you remount it? Pics if you have them.

 

I'm actually going to wait for the kit, looks great.
There's a few threads going around, you can find it if you search "rx7 vmount with ac" on google, I'd link to them myself but I can't remember the pages exactly, sorry!