Wiki definition of an Intercooler:

"An intercooler, or charge air cooler, is an air-to-air or air-to-liquid heat exchange device used on turbocharged and supercharged (forced induction) internal combustion engines to improve their volumetric efficiency by increasing intake air charge density through isochoric cooling. A decrease in air intake temperature provides a denser intake charge to the engine and allows more air and fuel to be combusted per engine cycle, increasing the output of the engine."

The bottom line is that heat is your biggest enemy with a Turbocharged car. The cooler you can keep your intake charge, the more power you will make. It is as simple as that.

How do you fight heat? First you start by installing a more effective unit. One that is designed without having the pressures of your accounting department looking over your shoulder telling you to make it cheaper to increase the bottom line. While the OEM units from Porsche are ok, they are by far not the ideal solution.

That is where we come in.

We started by collecting data on our Mustang MD-AWD-500-SE AWD dynamometer, on the street, and on various race tracks, using dual Omega DPi temperature meters outputting to the dyno's integrated data acquisition, and via a portable lab grade datalogger. Several runs were made recording temperatures and pressures before and after the stock and AWE Tuning intercooler assemblies and then averaged, with graphs of the changes shown below. All tests were done on our in house 2007 997TT with a prototype 700S turbo kit installed. 93 octane fuel was used for all tests.

Below: Temperature drop is the measurement of how much heat the intercooler is able to remove from the intake air. The higher the temperature drop, the denser the air charge, resulting in more power and less tendency for detonation in the cylinders. Our design was able to hold intake air temperatures to a maximum of just 20F higher than the start of the run vs a 65F climb with the stock intercoolers.




Below: Large intercoolers can do well in reducing intake air temperatures, but they can also introduce a lot of restriction to the intake air. That restriction will result in power loss even with the improved temps. Too much intake flow restriction means the turbo cannot deliver as much boost to the engine. Bigger is not always better with intercoolers. Our design excells in temperature drops and also in how pressure restriction is minimized to levels 1 psi less than the stock configuration.



Below: Power test of our intercooler design vs stock. Installing our intercooler system reduced heat tremendously, to produce a cooler, denser intake air charge, resulting in a very nice increase in power at high rpms (nearly 16 crank horsepower at peak when converting from the dyno sheet wheel power measurement). Even more impressive was the additional low end power released by reducing the pressure drop through the cores.



Developed in house by our Engineering staff.





Complete kit.







Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something today.

 

Thanks for the great info!!

AWE is a trusted old-line tuner!Unfortunately I got no AWE parts in my car yet...

Played forza motorsport in xbox360 last night at my friend's place.He's AWE TUNING S4 TURBO beatn my stage 4 997tt 800hp on drag race..Thats amazing!!Never seen any real world US tuner car appear in the video game before.Lol....

 

Thanks for the kind words.

Yes, we are very proud about being in Forza. It was a fun project.

Keep in mind that we ship worldwide. So don't let the fact that you are in NZ stop you from ordering from us.

I do most of the international sales here for A.W.E., and I have steamlined the process.

Email me if you ever need anything.

 

Mike, can you briefly review what is necessary to mount these intercoolers? I remember a few previous members saying something about cutting the plastic shroud around the edge of the bracket.

 

As compared to our competitors trimming is VERY minor.

Our start to finish install sheet can be found here:

http://awe-tuning.com/media/pdf/AWE_...tercoolers.pdf

 

I've had the AWE intercoolers on my car for a few months now and noticed a difference right away. Since I have the GIAC software, I was also able to upgrade to GIAC new intercooler file which made a huge difference. Those of you who have tried race gas on the GIAC software. Its like that but on pump. I would recommend this as a must have if you already have the GIAC software.

 

AWE coolers works excellent with Modified VTG's!!!!

 

Are there any noticeable gains with stock VTG's?

Will the ICs increase the lag on stock VTGs?

 

Informative & educational. Thanks for taking the time to post.

 

Thanks Mike.

 

Good questions, On the 700 kits this upgrade seems to make sense but on flashed TT's with the turbos untouched Im not so sure its going to return on the investment. Would love to see the above data done on flashed turbo though.

 

I have the AWE intercoolers and was using a handheld device that give me the data on intake temperature. It was 50 degrees outside and I was on the highway doing about 75 mph and the car was reading 55 degrees for the intake which is only a 5 degree difference than what the outside air temperature was. I know the advertised information reflects a 20 degree difference but I was wondering whether as it gets colder the difference is reduced.

 

A proper test would be if you did a 3rd gear hard acceleration run on the stock intercoolers and then did it with our intercoolers.

A steady state highway cruise is not a proper test.