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are some discrepencies because of this as the FMIC and Stillen IC would be more shrouded from air than the others tested. Unfortunately there is only so much you can simulate on a dyno. However, we did take this into consideration and we are aware that on the dyno without the bumper cover we are creating conditions that are not real-world, but we were wanting to get as accurate of a measurement of the intercooler's ability to cool with a healthy stream of air imparting on the full face of the unit. We used those 'squirrel cage' fans that are used in home AC units - they move a LOT of air. If we did it with the bumper cover on, the Z1 intercoolers would probably have fared better than the others due to the stock ducting and stock inlets on the bumper cover being all inline and matched. The Stillen ICs do have ducts that can be purchased for ~$200 which will help guide the air to their intercooler, but we didn't have those to test with. I did note the temperature differences you are pointing out and it was a suprising thing to find. What I figure is going on is the fact that the stock intercooler is so restrictive that at 18psi of boost it is backing up the compressed air from the turbo which in turn creates more heat on the inlet side. Problem with comparing the numbers how you did is that the change of rate of temperature is dependent on the temperature difference between the source and the sink. Since the stock intercooler was 10 degrees hotter than ours at its max, it is capable of dissipating that heat quicker than a cooler core, but the ending result was that although the stock intercooler dissipated more heat in terms of degrees F, its final peak outlet temperature was greater than the Z1. There are also other issues with the thermo numbers shown because they are only maximum values - its kindof like just taking mention of a car's peak HP or peak torque; it tells you nothing about the characteristic of the powerband. The trend of how quickly the intercooler became heatsoaked based on engine RPM or time would be the ideal way of doing this. The stock intercooler appears to be doing more work than the Z1 IC with the thermo information given, but you can look at the dyno chart and see that the stock intercooler must have gotten hotter far quicker than the rest. Again, the rate of change of temperature is dependent on the temperature difference of the source (in this case it is the charged air) and the sink(in this case it is the intercooler) = as the stock intercooler got hotter, it continued getting hotter at a slower rate. That 10 degree difference in temperature may not seem like much, but its a whole lot more heat energy than when the intercooler changes from 150 degrees to 160 degrees. I'm not an intercooler expert and this experiment certainly got me thinking about the dynamics of intercooler performance and design. The ideal gas law and thermodynamics predicate a lot of fundamental understandings of how they work, but it is not intuitive by any means else the question you asked wouldn't have been asked. I'm still trying to figure out why the water-air intercooler didn't make as much power as the air-air intercooler units, and even more miffed that they still underperformed when we added 32 degree bag of ice to the water resovoir of 4 gallons to try and improve its performance. All I'm trying to say here I guess is that there is a lot to think about when trying to make conclusions on the data and I'm still working some of it out myself, but thanks for the question and great observation.
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