[crushers]

1) Performance:
the intercooler is designed to cool the charge of air entering the combustion chamber. this will allow you to run a larger amounts of boost so you can crank up the settings
or
you can enjoy a cooler charge at the present setting. this will give you longer engine life.
the biggest problem with most people is "if a little is good then a lot is better" but not allways the case.

2) fuel consumption is directly related to your right foot. just adding an intercooler to present setting will not change the fuel milage

3) engine reliability is related to the fuel bing fed, the maintanence being done and your right foot. an intercooler will cool the charge of air but realisticly it will not change the life expectancy of an engine.

4) turbo life expectancy is directly related to oil and heat. think of it this way, anything you do downstream of the turbo will not affect the turbo. the turbo is a mech device designed to apply boosted air charge. the intercooler does not change this. if the intercooler is too big then the boost will be affected, if it is too small then the cooling of the air charge will be less than desired. the turbo itself does not know any difference.

i am pulling all this info out of my ass so take it will a bag of salt.

Originally Posted by Cañonero

Hello.

I was going to mention this in the water to air intercooler thread we are doing now, but its maybe better in a separate post.

I've been investigating in lots of 4wd forums about what kind of intercooler suits better and I found lots of people dissapointed with the improvement they got after installing and intercooler, it specially worried me some of them saying that "an intercooler in a big and old engine is a waste of money, it really works with more modern and small displacement engines".

Well, i'd like to ask your opinion about the improvement after fitting an intercooler in four areas.

1) Performance. Some people say they don't felt any improvement, some say lots of improvement, but, by far, most of the people say that, to have a performance improvement, you have to tweak your fuel pump and turbo pressure. If so, people like me that already have te pump and turbo tweaked, won't have any extra performance only by installing an intercooler?

2) Fuel comsumption. Some noticed a slightly decrease in consumption, some a very noticeable decrease, and some didn't noticed any fuel consumption variation at all.

3) Engine reliability. In this case, most of the people that has measured the EGT, noticed some decrease, so it should be good for engine life. The question is, how much?

4) Turbo life. Here I've read everything, people that thinks the turbo will suffer much more and will worn faster (speciall with front mount units), because it needs to turn faster to keep the same pressure. Some others that say the intercooler allows you to run bigger turbo pressures safely. And some think it will just life a little big longer.


What do people more experienced than me think?

Thanks.