As said in other threads my cars going in with pro alloy for an intercooler and radiator upgrade. Possibly an oil cooler aswell but that's probably at a later date.

I spoke with them today about a group buy and its definitely on the cards which will reduce the price significantly.

Obiviously the exact price won't be known till my cars finished but their guna get back to me with a ball park figure so i can get an idea of numbers together.

So couple of questions for those interested

1. Would you want both intercooler and radiator or just intercooler or just Rad??

2. If you had to cut the bumper would you be still interested or does the level of cutting make a difference??

3.What sort of figure are people willing to pay bearing in mind this should be the biggest intercooler avalible and the Rad will match the pace one.

Anything else you Guys want to know just ask and if i don't know I'll find out for you.

I'm Interested in both, but wouldn't like to cut anything structural, maybe a few mods to the bumper shell.

Price wise I would like to pay around £800 for a IC/Rad package.

Remember larger IC isn't always better!

This will also fit the Polo as well so it might be worth involving them in a group buy as well to help reduce the cost. Also if they can make it in two pieces rather than a rad/IC combined is there further discounts for buying both.

Cant imagine you will get huge numbers if you are after cutting bumpers to fit one though.

Jamies right about the IC bigger isnt always better. Pace were adamant there was no requirement to go larger than what they planning after i started pestering them. Turns out they were right in my case. Id speak to Pace about the power outputs you plan(270-280hp) and ask them how big they think it needs to be. They are the specialists.

I'm not talking about removing crash bars or anything that serious. More trimming of plastic if needed.

Hopefully they can do it in a way that both can be brought seperately or together.

Bigger is not always better i know but do you honestly think yours is guna be good enough running a full 2 bar map for long periods on track??

It wont be running 2 Bar. it'll be running 1.8Bar at the absolute max and then it will be dropping off. It only peaks at that momentarily.

APR are happy that its enough after analysing the EGTs so if they are happy so am I. If it starts to suffer with heatsoak APR will of course turn things back down to something manageable. If that means making 270Hp instead of 280hp im happy. Id be happy with 250-260hp anyway that was what i asked for

@ p1tt8ULL

What are your plans with power? Are you planning bigger turbos or WMI etc? Only ask as you have gone REVO who have already said they wont go any further than stage 2 with their tuning on this engine. Thats despite hurdy constantly pestering them to do him a map. Have they told you different?

For now about 230 - 240. Got alot of handling mods to get on the car next. Looking into Bigger Turbo not for massive power but to be able to run lower boost and wmi. I'm not chasing a figure but i want it to produce its power lap after lap on a track and be reliable.

Revo not said anything specific but reckon the intercooler I'm going with should allow me to run setting c without wmi. Will have to see what they do in the future as I'm sure they won't let Apr be the only option out there.

1. IC only for me

2. Realistically I'd want a direct fit without cutting but minor trimming might be ok.

3 £700 inc VAT. I think realistically this would be a good, competitive price.

3 £700 inc VAT. I think realistically this would be a good, competitive price.

ID expect to pay around that for an intercooler outside of a group buy tbh if it were me of be looking at £600 for a GO price

ID expect to pay around that for an intercooler outside of a group buy tbh if it were me of be looking at £600 for a GO price

Ahhh ok, I thought I was pushing it to say £700 lol

Looking at the current intercooler options

The stock cooler is pretty shallow but the whole front face is in contact with the air entering the lower grill, plus with the cooling fins and deep core it has a lot of surface area for that air to interact with.

80mm Tube Width

96mm Stack Height

617mm Tube Length

= 4.73 litres

The Pace cooler seems to keep the stock design philosophy by having a deep core that is in direct contact with the air entering the lower grill. I asked about why it wasnt higher and they said it would require cutting if they wanted to keep the same depth of core, so either have a thinner core with more height, or a thicker core but less height. They chose the latter. The biggest isue for guys is cost as this isnbt available as just an intercooler, it comes as the intercooler and radiator combo and is £1100 for the pair delivered. Me and Hurdy currently a running this combo.

90mm tube width

145 stack height

550mm tube length

= 7.17 litres

= 35% increase

Forge have gone for a slightly different approach with cast end tanks. The core doesnt look quite as deep as the stock cooler but it is a fair bit higher. Ive not seen this core on a car yet as this was only the development shots but i suspect some of the cooler will be hidden behind the bumper/reg plate etc so not in direct contact with the air flow. Not to sure of the final dimensions but i imagine a fairly large increase in volume. The Cupra one is around £700+VAT. No t sure whats happening with this and Forge right now as they have been due release for months and months!!

APR Australia decided to cobble their own intercooler together for their Polo GTI. They went with a stepped design with the thick lower section and a thinner top bit to allow for the exra height. I asked APR Uk about this and its not affiliated with APR LLC or APR USA, and wontbe sold here in the UK although you might be able to order it from the APR guys in Australia. its not cheap though, around £1100 without delivery or import costs!!!! A fair few guys in Oz are running this kit now and seem pretty happy. Plus Polo/Fabia intercooler parts are one and the same.

HG Motorsport went with the stack height approach and went for height over thickness. But alot of the intercooler is hidden behind the front bumper. Seems priced reasonably at 700 euro incl VAT(around £570 currently). Think a couple of guys on here are running this intercooler at the moment.

40mm tube width,

310mm stack height and

450mm tube length

= 5.58 litres volume

= 16% increase.

This image shows what i mean. Only half the intercooler is open to air flow, the rest is either behind the crash bar or bumper

The measurements used for volumes etc are outside measurements not including end tanks

I'm interested in a whole package as stated before.

I've been worried about that the pace-intercooler would be too little for me, since I'm aiming for over 300 bhp.

I'd be interested in some PLASTIC-cutting aslong as it's not seen (since then, it doesn't matter if it looks good or not ).

I'm interested too pay the least amount possible since it's quite a big part off the tuning-money I have left :p!

What I'm hoping we can do is to make it so the intercooler can be fitted alone to stock Rad but could upgrade to pro alloy Rad at later date if wanted.

Out of what's avalible its most likely to be similar to the hg ic but bigger. Working with the theory bigger surface area means more cooling. Also due to not having such a deep core like the pace more colder air will pass through the ic at higher speed and onto the Rad keeping block temps down.

What I'm hoping we can do is to make it so the intercooler can be fitted alone to stock Rad but could upgrade to pro alloy Rad at later date if wanted.

Out of what's avalible its most likely to be similar to the hg ic but bigger. Working with the theory bigger surface area means more cooling. Also due to not having such a deep core like the pace more colder air will pass through the ic at higher speed and onto the Rad keeping block temps down.

A bigger surface area should equal more cooling, but IMO your not looking at this properly. I agree to a certain respect that bigger frontal area should equal more cooling as technically it should have more surface area, however this is an AIR to AIR intercooler and requires air to pass though the cooling fins in order to operate effectively: so if an intercooler is partially blocked by the front crash bar and bumper and hasnt got any air flowing directly through it then its notgoing to be better at all at all.

Also how wil it pass though the cooler quicker if only the bottom 6" is exposed to the air. That means the top of the IC has next to no air flow at all!!

For guys who aren't aware of the makeup of an intercooler and how they work. The silver horizontal tubes(cores) are where the hot air passes though after leaving the turbo. The zig zag bits between each core help to absorb the heat and are what cool the hot air. These Zig Zags are what make up the high surface area. The more air the gets into direct contact with this the cooler the more heat that can be extracted from the hot air within. So if you have a tall but thin intercooler it might have the same surface area as a shorted thicker intercooler.

There are to two types of intercooler tube. Competely hollow ones which are the easiest and cheapest to produce, or the more expensive ones(below) which also have the cooling fins inside the core as well, thus increasing surface area in which heat it extracted from the hot air passing through and dissipated to the air passing the cooling fins.

So with the diagonal cooling fins between the tubes(cores) and maybe the cooling fins within the tubes (if the company uses these!!) this is how they get the high surface area to withdraw heat and allow it to dissipate the heat onto the cool passing airflow.

As said above its pointless IMO having an intercooler that is partially blocked by panel work as its not going to work efficiently. As said its an AIR to AIR intercooler and needs air to pass though the fins in order to cool.

The lower grill on the Fabia vRS is EXACTLY 6"(150mm) high. So anything above that 6" height is obscured behind panel work, thus will col at a slower rate than the lower part of the intercooler. This will also have a negative effect as well. The lower tubes exposed to the incoming air in the lower grill will cool substantially quicker than the air passing through the higher tubes. What this will provide is cause the air to pass through the higher and lower tubes at different velocities(due to the temperature/pressure differential) so when it hits the end tanks your going to end up with turbulant air which will give you a pressure loss as well.

As well as this if your input/output pipework is at the bottom of your end tanks(which it will be) then how much of that air is going to be sent though those top tubes? Its going to try and go the quickest most direct route because its travelling at high velocity again this will give you a different flow differential between the top and bottom. This image explains what i mean

Just my thoughts anyway, based on the discussion with Pace about the way to get the best from an intercooler. FWIW when i turned up at Pace i had pictures of the Forge, APR and HG coolers to compare. The only one which mades sense was the Forge, however they dont make their own cores so we have no idea what the inner tubes are like. Maybe hollow, maybe with internal fins, who knows? Im more than happy to be proved wrong, if anything id have rather had a larger intercooler, i did pester Pace about size, but that was just a bigger is better philosophy without looking at it from a physics point of view, i bowed to Paces technical expertise instead.

I just think in this instance that bigger wont necessarily be better.

Si, what size is the standard inlet/outlet on the IC, are they both 50mm?

Si, what size is the standard inlet/outlet on the IC, are they both 50mm?

Not sure mate. We can measure it though when your back up here. I'll have to find my vernier calipers. They're somewhere in my man cave.

I used to be a part of a family business some 20 or so years ago fabricating bespoke radiators and intercoolers for industrial and commercial equipment. Only two pence i'd add is if you look at a 10 ton digger front on the first thing you'll notice is the poorly styled and less than aero dynamic huge front radiator grill. It is however a necessity as making radiators 3 foot deep with a frontal area of 20cm just wouldn't work. This is mostly due to two reasons, commerical equipment doesn't generally go 100mph and provide good air flow but also a very deep radiator or intercooler tends to build up a huge amount of debris and general gunk inbetween the fins.

One of our businesses main source of revenue was steam cleaning these deep radiators and intercoolers, flushing the insides and doing a job I hated with a passion and forget the name of now.. basically it was using a tiny set of pliers and opening any flattened fins that had been hit by tiny stones or other rubbish.

Given the choice, i'd probably prefer a design similiar to the pace intercooler, as with oil temperatures reaching 100 degrees I can't see having 3/4 of your stock radiator receiving hot air from your intercooler as a good thing. I'd just bare in mind that you may need to maintain it in a couple of years if you want to keep it's performance up. I'm sure there has to be a few independent businesses still going out there who would give it a service if you looked (unless Serck has taken over completely now).

Edited 15 April, 201214 yr by RobL