Moving the intercooler - how much benifit?
 

Been told that if the intercooler is moved to the front (bumper area) the car will gain 100bhp. Not sure I can belive this tbh, although thats from a pro karting company. Obviously this will invalidate the warranty but..... 100bhp?
Car is a MY03 WRX with backbox & bailey dumper only mods so far.

i think i'll move mine aswell for that much no chance of that much mate

5 / 10 / 15 Bhp & so on , depends on Mods, Which turbo, Boost Etc, but no where near 100

Dean

Boost increase
 

One of the guys in our local scooby club has an FMIC, apparently his car now pulls like a train?

PMSL. Do you want to tell us which pro karting company this is so we can phone them up and take the piss? :D

Running an FMIC will result in reductions in charge temp, but simply relocating the standard intercooler to the front of the car (if this is what was suggested) isn't really feasible. You will in practice need a new intercooler specifically designed to be mounted there, and the gains, in themselves, would be a tiny fraction of those claimed. As Dean says, an aftermarket intercooler (whether top or front mount) won't deliver huge power gains in itself, but will remove a bottleneck that can limit the usefulness of other power-raising mods.

As a matter of interest, why did you change the dumpvalve? This wasn't as a result of advice from the same company was it? Either way, it's arguable that fitting this may already have invalidated your warranty, so your comment above about the intercooler doing it may be moot.

100 bhp PMSL with a 100 shot of Nos and a turbo the size of Devon it might :D like someone said varies on mods but expect a min of around 15 bhp

Didnt anyone have a top trump that could beat that :rolleyes:

I know a little bit about cars & I too thought that 100bhp increase just from that was a tad enthusiastic. Its not my car, my mate bought it a few weeks ago & on sunday we took it to Elan Valley - was good!

There was no dumpvalve, but this company did fit it, thats when the intercooler advice was given.

Lol, there was a dumpvalve, all turbocharged Imprezas come with one as standard. Sounds like these kart muppets took it off and swapped it for an aftermarket one. Did they tell your mate it'd make the car quicker or summat?

Wow, this is one of those claims that's relatively easy to blow out of the water by using some rudimentary physics and common sense.

A 30 degree Celcius decrease in charge temperature gives roughly a 10% increase in power.
Let's say you take the OE IC and were able to install it at the front.
How much cooler is it there? Well, at very high and very low speeds it's a lot cooler (Let's say 20 degree C). At normal speeds (<100mph) the temp is probably the same.
I can't see the charge temperature at most ever being more than 10 degree C cooler.
That means a 3% increase in power (let's make it 4%).
Now, what does a WRX make? 250bhp?
And 4% of that is what? About 10bhp...
Can you see that in order to get a 100bhp gain, the standard power would have to be 2,500bhp?

A FMIC might open the way towards getting a 100bhp gain, but doesn't give those gains on its own.