Intercooler kits: eBay vs Brand name
 

Hi all,

An ebay intercooler and piping kit on ebay costs anywhere from $100 - $300, and a brand name kit (I priced Greddy and HKS) costs $1000 - $2500 on average. They all come with the same things, intercooler, piping, silicone couplers, clamps.

Now I understand that the ebay ones are essentially universal kits, whereas the brand name ones are designed to fit a specific vehicle. That counts for something, but not 10x the price.

I'm really asking about build quality, I mean, pipe is pipe, and couplers are couplers, so that leaves the intercooler itself. But even with the intercooler, if it doesn't leak and it cools adequately its done its job no?

So can someone tell me why these brand name ones are so dang expensive or is there really anything wrong with cheaper ebay ones?

thanks.

Without getting into a long winded discussion showing the merits of the better built cores only to have non believers tell me their ebay core bends the laws of physics, I'm going to say simply... Just buy it.

~S~

if your pushing the boat on power then maybe the research and development might mean that buying a branded kit, but most people arnt running massive power so may aswell save your money and get an ebay kit, ive seen some massive power being put through ebay coolers before so im sure you will be fine

Go with an Ebay kit, and route the piping yourself. The intercooler we're using was $110 shipped, and the piping/couplers was even less. This setup has been making 620 rwhp sice '08, before that it made slightly less using a Greddy cooler/piping kit. Same yourself the money and go with an Ebay. Take a minute or two to route your piping... so many people just throw something together, so long as it gets them from point A to point B. eliminate the bends/unecessary kinks and so on. Like any other system/process with an end goal, get rid of the bottlenecks, make it efficient.

http://usera.ImageCave.com/Jdmfantasy/2121.JPG

http://usera.ImageCave.com/Jdmfantasy/HPIM2196.JPG

Yeah i got one of those ebay cores also. Works great in my opinion. Like jdmfantasy said, just make sure the piping is top notch..

from what i heard they are worth the money. how hard can it be to make an intercooler? its not like turbos where specific tolerances and moving parts are involved...

just a q for jdmfantast (sick car by the way it looks crazyyyyyy) but why did u route your piping that way? too many 90 degree bends no?

Yep, too many bends... it goes down underneath the radiator (not installed at time of pic) and then back up.

I read a post a couple months ago about these guys who were having problems with their ebay intercooler while dyno tuning. I think the issue was the fins were extremely thin causing the IC to loose efficiency because it could not transfer the heat well?

that being said, there are TONS of guys on here running ebay intercoolers with great results and im not going to argue that!

Why not go with a custom built intercooler? I had a shop make me a custom intercooler kit using SPEARCO products.

The biggest difference is the mass of the intercooler, how much metal there is in the core and how much heat it can soak up when cooling air is low.
The Chinese ones are typically a fraction of the weight of the HKS cores or the old Trust cores. The new Trust cores seem to be different than the old ones, much lighter. Me thinks they might be Chinese now. But my Hks core is about twice the weight of chinese core.

How much does a custom cooler kit cost? I would imagine it could be done for as much or less than one of these brand name kits, and then you have the benefit of it being tailor made to your setup.

Yuki... you're wasting your breath the ebay cores are the best thing going ;)

~S~

I thought the Ebay Manifolds were pretty nice until I saw a Zero-R Manifold.

i have used over 10 ebay intercoolers in different cars and they all worked just as good if not better than the $1000 + ones