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You know there are tons of knockoff cheap parts that are WORSE THAN THE OEM....
But some of them look blinggy to the uneducated... Folks often call it ricey....
A lot of people will probably bash ithe. I personally bought the competition intercooler from wagner and love it. I've read a lot of peo0le who bought the eBay ones and have good results. Just do your homework and make an educated decision. No doubt there are some bad ones as well as good ones out there.
The Forge intercooler is just a slight rung above the eBay coolers (which are more often than not, equal to, if not worse than OEM). If you really want to spend the money right and have an intercooler that is not only functional, but adds a touch of bling through the grill go with the Helix Intercooler. Quality comes at a price, and after going with cheap intercoolers in previous cars only to sell it for pennies on the dollar for a quality cooler later, I will spend the money right the first time.
Wagner Intercoolers comes with a 5-year manufacturers limited warranty.
Wagner Tuning offers two different types of Intercoolers, Performance and Competition. The Performance Intercooler is preferred for OEM turbos; the Competition is for upgraded turbos.”
Intercooler upgrades results in new horsepower gain at the wheels.
Wagner Intercoolers use advance technologies to MAXIMIZE air flow, resulting in even more power gain.
A lot of hearsay with no facts on either side in this thread....
Originally Posted by cguzz
I heard that
Eric @Helix has gone through multiple revisions, countless hours of research and flow characteristics, as well as designed the intercooler to be a direct bolt on with ZERO modifications needed to get it to fit properly.
While there isn't a life story written on the sales page, they are the only manufacturer who actually posted air temp drops, proved a near non existent boost loss, and I'm sure is quite willing to fill you in on all the ins and outs of why their intercooler is priced where it is.
Ive had one of these for a few months with manic stage 2 tune
fit itself was pretty good, i didnt weigh it but it was definitely over 15lbs, cast ends had the in/out ground smooth internally
The inlet pipe is a little smaller than the stock hose and smooth with just a rolled bead on the end - wouldnt be a big deal but with the alta silencer delete pipe I needed to use tclamp instead of a hose clamp and really tighten the hell out of it. pipe itself is a decent gauge i wasnt worried about crushing it or anything
The outlet could use a little more neck on it, the angle that it leaves the intercooler leaves a short side made it tough to get a clamp on that wasnt on the bead, not needed but i used a tclamp on it also.
performance wise - it'll stay within 2-3* of ambient during cruise. full pulls i will regularly see intake temps climb 15* over ambient but havent really noticed anything more than 20* over.
pressure drop is the only unknown for me, my car will rarely ever build boost past 17.5-17.7psi, i've gone through and replaced just about everything related to boost control, leak test, smoke test.
I'm about to the point where im ready to swap it just to know if it is the problem
edit - the one i have isnt exactly the one pictured above but it is similar ebay china made cost about 220 iirc
Until someone does back to back testing with data on each cooler there is nothing to prove to me one is any better then the next. Show me where the Wanger, Helix or any of the others are going to give me x amount of HP over what I have now.
Until someone does back to back testing with data on each cooler there is nothing to prove to me one is any better then the next. Show me where the Wanger, Helix or any of the others are going to give me x amount of HP over what I have now.
An intercooler by itself isn't going to give you big HP gains. Read a book about modern ECUs and tuning and you'll understand why. What a good intercooler will do is keep your intake air temperatures way down, which will result in consistent performance regardless of temperature and continuous high boost. It also provides the foundation for a tune with higher boost.
You are right to be wary of performance claims without any data to back them up. There are only two FMIC manufacturers that I know of that publish test data for their intercoolers, Helix and Wagner. If the current Helix FMIC had been available when I made my purchase decision it would have been a tough call vs. the Wagner. My data logging of stock vs. Wagner is here: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...er-review.html so yes it really does do the job.
The Wagner and Helix intercoolers are very high quality and have real engineering and testing, plus there's a manufacturer to stand behind the product if there's an issue. Do you get that from a knockoff on ebay that maybe looks about the same, but has no testing, no data, and who knows what quality?
As nkfry said, spend the money right the first time.
An intercooler by itself isn't going to give you big HP gains. Read a book about modern ECUs and tuning and you'll understand why. What a good intercooler will do is keep your intake air temperatures way down, which will result in consistent performance regardless of temperature and continuous high boost. It also provides the foundation for a tune with higher boost.
You are right to be wary of performance claims without any data to back them up. There are only two FMIC manufacturers that I know of that publish test data for their intercoolers, Helix and Wagner. If the current Helix FMIC had been available when I made my purchase decision it would have been a tough call vs. the Wagner. My data logging of stock vs. Wagner is here: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...er-review.html so yes it really does do the job.
The Wagner and Helix intercoolers are very high quality and have real engineering and testing, plus there's a manufacturer to stand behind the product if there's an issue. Do you get that from a knockoff on ebay that maybe looks about the same, but has no testing, no data, and who knows what quality?
As nkfry said, spend the money right the first time.
I'm really happy thank you are satisfied with your name brand cooler. I never had any doubt that it wouldn't do the job but that still does not prove it's any better than ebay coolers. I've never tried datalogging with Torque and even though it's in the HI 80's I'll give it a shot and we can compare numbers.
