R26 To intercooler or not?

Temp gauge on the clocks or does he have inlet temp gauge?
Intercooler won’t affect clock gauge so any difference on that is down to the cars.
As for having it, why not if it’s free and should make your car run better!

 

Aftermarket I/C without a custom tune will likely make your car run lean and therefore hotter. Possibly not an issue if you’re not going to track it but if you do without a tune to suit, then beware.

 

It should work better with having more surface area, therefore cool the inlet temp more creating denser air which should give more power or at least stress the engine less.

As dook says though a map will make the most of it.

 

I have a Wagner intercooler in my 275 MRS3, and I was pretty sure that I won´t notice any power gains with normal conditions and it was confirmed. But on track (or German Autobahn) your engine will be protected with lower combustions temps and will generate a bit more power due to more spark advance accepted by the lower intake temp. Most gains will be if you make a remap, first change the I/C and all items you are intending to install / exhaust etc.) and do the remap at last. The intake temp with my Wagner is about 15° lower than with stock, with WOT its usually in the 35° range if ambient temp is about 25°.With the stock I/C it was higher than 50°. A good invest, even when you don´t feel power increase immediately.

 

With respect, thats not right. The engines ECU reads the intake temp and meters fuel and all parameters ( spark advance, boost.....) according to engines demands. The engine will not run lean if you install an aftermarket I/C. The intake air sensor reads colder air than with the stock I/C, no matter why the air is colder. Could be caused simply from colder ambient temps.

 

The stock intercooler is a piece of junk.you wont believe what a tin can it is until you remove it.
Any aftermarket cooler will be a better option than stock..many use the 60mm chinese one thats rebranded by several firms,which are good up to 300hp.
If its forge,or airtech..then even better..

 

With reciprocated respect, that's not right. Particularly the highlighted sentence. With a modern ECU I believed to be true, that as you say, reads everything from all the sensors and adjusts accordingly. Although the modern ECU, for the most part, does this very well as a car sold across the globe which has to deal with varying fuel quality, a variety of uses and still perform in vastly different weather conditions, is done so with OEM specification without consideration to aftermarket performance parts.

Here in Australia there were a few cars that experienced harmful overheating on track without a re-tune following fitment of an I/C. It was discovered that these cars had less than ideal AFR and I quote a dyno tuner that was asked to investigate, "Installing an aftermarket intercooler will increase the AFR by up to 0.5 AFR making the engine run leaner. Unless this has been tuned out it will increase the coolant temps significantly causing the problems you have identified."

Now, to give further context, some cars have not had the same issue with just an I/C install and the cars in question were at track days in 35+ degree days. So, like I said it is probably not going to be an issue with a car that will never see track time. However, if I was installing an I/C, I would get it re-tuned because I regularly track my car and almost half of those track days are run in 30+ degrees.

 

Lots of the aftermarket ICs are with boxes welded and therefore not that perfect shape, generating pressure losses over the stock part (what is also not perfect in shape, but better than welded) The Wagner IC has cast boxes and a perfect, flow-friendly shape. But your mates one should be better than stock so go for it. BTW: The stock IC is very lightweight, due to it´s weak plastic boxes which are very sensible to crack. Aftermarket ICs are much heavier due to their Alu boxes and bigger cores - the only downside...

About fuel consumption: It´s hardly possible to compare fuel consumptions to each other without utilising defined drive cycles and measuring the consumption sientifically. Just to claim " he´s going harder" is not the way to determine fuel consumptions. An intercooler wouldn´t have any influence to fuel consumption. It´s no matter for the engine whether it gets colder air from an better intercooler or lower ambient temps. If the pressure losses from the IC are lower, fuel c. will be even better due to lower engine pumping effort.

 

Interesting point, DOOOOK, temps in Down under are really extrem compared to Germany, but anyway, that´s no explanation to this behaviour. I guess that intake temps with a stock IC on 35°ambient will with track will see 65-70° +intake, with an aftermarket intercooler estimated 40, what decreases combustion temps significantly. Furthermore, EU6 cars have wideband Lambda sensors and the are adapting fuel amounts even with full throttle, supposedly to Lambda 0,7 or so the make sure neither the turbo nor pistons or exhaust valves will be failing due to too high temps.

On the older engines (I´m not sure if all 275 hp engines are Eu6) with Eu5 might be possible that there´s no wideband Lambda sensors are installed. Then It might be that with full throttle the ECU adapts to an fuel amount what would be expected to the engines capabilities. Apart from that, the intake temp is definitly a parameter what is involved in fuel amount calculation and therefore the ECU should be able to adapt the bigger amount of oxygen what enters the engine. Again, it´s no matter for the engine whether more oxygen is passing in consequence of lower ambient temps or of a better working IC.
What might be happen is if you use an huge IC what lowers the intake temp dramatically, the limits of the engines adapting capabilities will be overrun and the engine will run too lean. Thats my piont of view. The perfect way would be to find an Tuner who measures Lambda values in comparison with stock and aftermarket ICs together with intake temps. I also don´t know what Lambda figures the stock ECU produces on 275 or 265 hp cars, would be interesting. I didn´t hear from engine failures from Nürburgring guys with modified ICs so far, supposedly most of them may have remapped ECUs, but not everyone.

 

mine is a 60mm item,and wasnt remapped..although the improvement in cooling over oem wont be as significant compared to a forge or airtech.

 

This is for an R26 though old school, which are all alloy coolers.

 

Same cooler is what was on the 175 diesel.