Plaz Vs Process West

[discostig]

will be accurate , but cant see live

Not true if you hook the XCAL up to laptop running livelink - in fact that is the only way I can log, the XCAL drops the connection to my car if I try to log to the device...

But yeah I'm sure you can see the readouts live in livelink.

[SuckSqueezeBangBlow]

Mick, where is the factory IAT sensor?

I have the aeroforce gauge and a plazmaman b-series replacement cooler.

if my car has sat for a while after running, it heatsoaks everything and I see temps up to 55C after restarting. after a while of driving they drop back to the high 30Cs/low 40Cs with light throttle in summer but then, if stuck in traffic they rise again easily. I'm guessing the cooler isn't heatsoaked but wherever the sensor is must be.

[Wenier]

If your in traffic there is no airflow and the IAT will rise. The intercooler can't do any cooling without airflow.

Edited 19/02/14 10:12 AM by Wenier

[Kroozin]

Thermos?

[MattyP]

My fans to a pretty good job keeping em down in stop start traffic

[ratter]

iat is in the manifold, air temp in the cooler would not be correct for the ecu to make adjustments on

[Bellato]

Seriously have to laugh at this thread, lets break it down in to groups.

We have serious performance orientated guys , guys that just listen to tuner X and hand over the Visa, guys that are on tight budgets and have to save...

And to top it the thread is also comparing 2 seriously different style cores, bar and plate will always cool better than tune and fin,with respect to actual core size tuners experienced in turbo tuning should know this as its fairly common knowledge.

Now Im not having a go at any tune shops or independent tuners, there's ALOT of awesome tuners out there, but unfortunately some are not.

People need to make educated decisions, forums like this are a great way to obtain information, but are also a place of great bias and confusion.

Some good comments from guys that have used X brand cooler with good results, results that at the time of purchase they were extremely happy with, only to see another car later on make 5-10% more dyno read kws, with a different brand intercooler... did they make a poor decision the first time, or have their expectations now changed because they've now seen a higher power result?

At the end of the day, for most of us its how the car drives on the road that is the most important, if you like to go out of cruises and run your mates, then on-road performance is what you need to look at, and tube/fin cooler perform totally different to bar and plate cooler.

Refresh time... I am yet to see anyone comment on this, tube and fin will always refresh much faster, making your on road inlet temps lower. So what does this mean?

Example, your cruising along at 60kays, your mates next to you, tube n fin being a faster temp transfer, will generally mean your motor has lower temps as air is flowing through the core, the bar n plate, generally considered a greater heat sink, thus holding more heat in its heavy dense alloy core.... nail it and you'll probably jump in front, with inlet temps naturally rising on both cores, the tube and fin will heat faster, but then cool its heat soaked temp much faster... so the next run you do your inlet temps have dropped back down fast, where as the bar n plate is still hotter, so now its inlet temps are a bit higher... so you can see how on road performance will greatly vary between the two cores... but if numbers are still your main deciding factor, data log your car, you'll be able to see exactly what temps are coming in and how your tuner has set up temp v IAT correction... Ill talk about this next as E85 and 98 make a huge difference here.

We are lucky to have a lot of temp correction tables in the tuning software (SCT, HP , Sniper), the main one that we look at , in regards to intercoolers is Inlet Air temp Vs Spark timing, as mick mentioned early.

What is it? basically it is a correction table that is already set up by Ford, to suit the OEM intercooler and 98oct fuel. We have the ability to adjust this, there is no right and wrong for this table, purely governed but the amount of engine knock (ping).

Now on a 2010 F6, this table , at 37.8deg C will not add or remove any spark timing.... therefor IF your chosen intercooler hit a max of 37.8deg the computer will not remove and spark from any timing maps, therefor not reduce power from spark.

IF the inlet temps go above 37.8 the computer will start to reduce spark, according to how this table is set, thus reducing power. the next temp indicated is 67deg C, with a reduction of around 3deg spark (there is also a multiplying table working at load / rpm that will vary the total spark, but generally 3deg) so IF you were to manually remove 3deg of spark from the motor at WOT, you will loose a fair amount of power... and that is the most common reason power figures vary between core types (of the same size)

How do we counter act this? Some don't, they either don't have the confidence to adjust this table, or purely do not know or have not been taught to do so.

Its up to the tuner to adjust this table IF they want to, and if they do, they need to carefully monitor knock, and there are a lot more factors that contribute to knock than just inlet temps.

Ok so now you have E85 in the tank, inlet temps are now much much less a contributor to knock than 98... Example, My GT runs 11psi at WOT on 78deg C at 7200rpm on E85, with 27deg of spark timing... do not compare this to a XR6T motor as the coyote takes a lot more spark. If this was on 98 it would ping its tits off and break.

To back this up I have also run my G6ET at 25psi boost on E85 with NO intercooler at all, none, No pinging , 18deg spark at WOT and inlet temps of 60-70.

Funny thing is back in the 90s when I began tuning and working with turbo cars, a lot of us didn't even have intercoolers, so we had to deal with 90+deg inlet temps, to counteract this we ran water/meth mix's to drop combustion chamber temps, this is exactly what E85 does, the inlet air temp may be high, but the resulting combustion temp is greatly lower, thus working against detonation, on 98 you have huge combustion temps, so lower inlet temps will always be ideal over higher temps.

End of the day all the coolers on our market perform very well, there all different sized , different prices ect so yes results will always vary, and all tuners tune differently so again results will vary.

But one thing I will say is if your running E85, choose your intercooler on airflow, do not worry about variations in inlet temps... so I guess that's pretty much everyone looking at 450kw plus... dropping 5 or 10deg inlet temp on E85 isn't worth even thinking about when tuned with the above compensations taken care of.

Im a huge fan of Plazmaman , and ultimately inspired by the work of ProcessWest, and its great to see comparisons like this but people really need to know what goes on in the tuning side of things, and how the final result of a modded XR6 F6 can vary, regardless of who made what and says what.

Soooo will my rapid cooler hold up to 400rwkw or do I have to upgrade it to PW stage 2 or 3?

[AzMahoony]

mines surviving but anymore boost proved pointless as no extra power was achieved and the temps.

[Justa6]

Soooo will my rapid cooler hold up to 400rwkw or do I have to upgrade it to PW stage 2 or 3?

I've got 480rwkw on a rapid cooler, seems fine.

[fehlbie]

I read a tech article a couple of years ago stating that tube and fin coolers had a higher pressure drop across the core than a bar and plate of the same size. Meaning your turbo had to make more pressure to see the equivalent boost pressure at the inlet manifold. From what I understand it is a trade off either way.