Haven't seen anything on here about these. Sam sent them to me a week ago and finally had a few hours to put them in.

I have a methanol system on the car,.. which prevents me from getting good temp data on them with the logger.

THAT SAID,.. today I turned down my Aquamist HSF-3 system by 30% and did a 3rd gear pull and there was zero ignition retard. Which is better than the GT2 inter-coolers and the meth system dialed all the way up. Usually I see 2-3 degrees of timing pulled in spots on a few cylinders.

I'm going to try turning the meth system down even more to see how low I can go without knock.

GT2 v.s. By Design Auto





GT2RS coolers and hoses weigh 8.715 lbs per side.



The By Design ones with hoses and clamps weigh 17.115 lbs per side.

So in total,.. these inter-coolers will add 16.8 lbs to the car. But that extra thermal mass is just what you want when you're banging through the gears at high boost.


The performance difference even without tuning for it is VERY noticeable over the GT2RS coolers. First gear seems about the same,. but by the start of second gear I can tell it's better,.. and by the end of second gear feels a lot better. (maintaining temp better thanks to the increased mass and cooling ability).

The methanol system is good for 80-90 hp. And I've turned it down 30% so far and have less knock than before. So I have to imagine that even with stock turbos,. these have to be worth 30+ hp over GT2 coolers.

I have some new 63.5mm turbos still in the boxes. Someday I'll put them in and have Sam do his thing to the ECU.

Anyway,.. very happy with them so far.

 

+ adding weight here is a good thing. Remember these act as heat sinks.

 

Did you have to modify your tune? Interested in these as well. Is Sam having specials going on?

 

I did not have to no.

No reason that I can think of to why you would. The turbo will be working a tad easier,.. and the charge-air temp will be cooler,.. and therefore the engine happier once you do this.

Basically the car runs like it's cold out.

A re-tune would allow me to make even more power though,... but there's no rush for that. I will do a few more things before paying for a new tune.

 

The hoses and coolers look to be SRM units, which have worked on our car great. I put those on this spring, along with do88 inlet pipes and some brv tuning. IATs are better mainly on the peaks during the middle of our runs. The biggest gain was the throttle response improvement, there is much less lag, and the torque spike is not as sudden as it was with the RS coolers and stock inlets. That helps when modulating the throttle to exit corners.

 

Edit Sam told me that they are indeed manufactured by SRM,.. but use different cores that Sam provides.


They do flow ! I was using a very large Redmax back-pack leaf blower to dry the insides and make sure there wasn't anything left in them,... and I could blow leaves 10' away through the inter-cooler. LOL

 

The first side took me 4-5 tries to get it right. Second side was a breeze. (Basically, I could do someone else's car right now perfectly in a couple of hours LOL)

But that's how it goes. You learn as you go.

To save the next person the learning curve,.. here would be my instructions on how to do the install.

Stu's "BY DESIGN AUTO" INTER-COOLER INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS.
1. Jack up the rear of the car. Remove the rear wheels, rear inner fender liners (5 Torx screws), tail lights (2 Torx screws ea) and the rear bumper cover (12 Torx screws and 2 push anchors).

2. Remove an inter-cooler assembly from the car. (One small Phillips screw by the exhaust tip,.. two 13mm stamped-nuts on the underside where the exhaust heat-shield meets the bottom of the cooler frame,.. and five 13mm nuts / bolts that hold the black frame to the car. (And of course the 2 hose clamps at the Y-Pipe and the turbo. (7mm socket)

3. Remove the stock inter-cooler from it's frame.

4. Trim the ridge from the sides of both the upper and lower inter-cooler shrouds, so the shrouds sit flush to the coolers.

5. Cut the upper shroud in half about 2/3 of the way up (In the area with the taper), and stuff the upper one into the lower half,.. LEAVE IT LOOSE AT THIS POINT.

6. Carefully clean the inside of the coolers to make sure there is no packing materials etc inside them. I washed mine out with water,.. and then used a leaf-blower to blow air through them for a while to dry them.

7. Put the lower shroud and new cooler into the frame and install the 3 Allen-head bolts and washers supplied with the kit. Now install the top shroud and zip-tie the shroud halves together. (You will need to drill a small hole through the tabs in the lower shroud to have someplace to put the zip-ties through).

8. Install the straighter of the hoses on the outlet end that goes to the Y-Pipe, and test fit the cooler to the car. At this point you will need to trim that hose to fit. This hose comes longer than necessary (By Design LOL),.. and the extra length will initially prevent the frame from bolting all the way up to the car. Bolt the frame back in place fully. Use the scrape marks on the black frame where the original nuts and bolts were as a guide to make sure you have the black frame in the right place.

9. Now you can telescope the upper half of the upper air shroud up to the chassis at the top. Use a flashlight to look in there from the front and make sure that you do indeed have it all the way tight to the car. THEN you can drill two 1/8" holes on either end of the outer edge, and two more holes on the front edge for rivets.

10. Remove the assembly and install aluminum rivets with washer backers in the 4 holes you just drilled in the previous step. I used 1/8" aluminum rivets about 1/2" long. Once those 4 rivets are installed,.. you can go ahead and drill 2 holes on the back side and install rivets and backer-washers there also.

11. Slip the hose clamps over the hose end of the outlet hose. Do the same for the other end of the outlet hose by placing it's clamp over the end of the Y-Pipe. Make sure the clamp on the end of the inter-cooler (behind the tail-light) isn't going to rub against the top of the fender and make noise.

12. Install assembly in the car for the final time, connecting the hose to the Y-Pipe and tightening the hose clamps.

13. Now you can fit the inlet hose from the turbo. Some trimming may be necessary here also. (This hose is also left with extra material, so as to be able to work with multiple types of turbos).

14. Repeat for the other side.

15. Re-install the bumper-cover, rear wheel well shrouds and wheels. You will probably need to trim the bottom edges of the wheel-well shrouds with a utility knife as you install them.

 

Thanks for the ride up buddy. I've had the pleasure of tuning many many cars with pretty much every different cooler out there. The stack up with the best and I'm really happy with them. Sean at SRM has been making my intercoolers for about 3 years now. We've come up with a nice set up that he builds to our spec and we did the hoses together on the longer side so they can work with any configuration. Longer is always better than too short ha ha.

Yeah Stan I think you got one of the first sets with the new casted tanks. I moved over the custom core that we've been using with great success on the 991 cars to all of my IC's. We've built some extremely high intake air temperatures on these 991's running up to 30 pounds of boost and I'm very happy with it. Sean can lay dimes like no other! Our Pike's Peak Hillclimb 991 turbo driven by factory Porsche driver David Donahue was running our By Design Stage 4 package at full tilt at altitude for 10 minutes. They performed amazingly!

Most of the time the initial impression is exactly what Stan mentioned. Better throttle response, smoother pull and more power across the band. We can actually go in and crank the car up a little bit more with the added flow and cooling benefit. With Cobb we have stage III which mainly consists of an intercooler upgrade. That's how helpful they are even against the GT2 RS coolers. Always in stock and I'm always willing to work some great deals for you guys as members. Feel free to reach out anytime. I generally try to include packages with a re-calibration so you can get the full benefit.

Here are a few more pics and a graph showing IAT versus stock 991 3.5 in white

 

Ooh they look good and nice efficiency...Sam, my car have those now?

[QUOTE=SamboTT@ByDesign;4653808]Thanks for the ride up buddy. I've had the pleasure of tuning many many cars with pretty much every different cooler out there. The stack up with the best and I'm really happy with them. Sean at SRM has been making my intercoolers for about 3 years now. We've come up with a nice set up that he builds to our spec and we did the hoses together on the longer side so they can work with any configuration. Longer is always better than too short ha ha.

Yeah Stan I think you got one of the first sets with the new casted tanks. I moved over the custom core that we've been using with great success on the 991 cars to all of my IC's. We've built some extremely high intake air temperatures on these 991's running up to 30 pounds of boost and I'm very happy with it. Sean can lay dimes like no other! Our Pike's Peak Hillclimb 991 turbo driven by factory Porsche driver David Donahue was running our By Design Stage 4 package at full tilt at altitude for 10 minutes. They performed amazingly!

Most of the time the initial impression is exactly what Stan mentioned. Better throttle response, smoother pull and more power across the band. We can actually go in and crank the car up a little bit more with the added flow and cooling benefit. With Cobb we have stage III which mainly consists of an intercooler upgrade. That's how helpful they are even against the GT2 RS coolers. Always in stock and I'm always willing to work some great deals for you guys as members. Feel free to reach out anytime. I generally try to include packages with a re-calibration so you can get the full benefit.

Here are a few more pics and a graph showing IAT versus stock 991 3.5 in white

 

Ooo I need a set of these, they look great. Great write up

 

Cost?

 

Feel free to reach out guys. We generally have inventory for 996, 997, 997.2 and 991TT all models. I offer 6speed deals for hardware and hardware.software package deals.