In a market swamped with intercoolers, some good, some awful and some great we thought we’d cut through the crap and select a cooler from the Engineering wizards at Integrated Engineering for a unique intercooler system with proven results! But not before we tested the cooler first hand…
First, let’s talk a little about why you need a performance intercooler. When upgrading your Golf R, a key ingredient to making power consistently is the intercooler. When increasing the boost pressure the air increases in temperature, when these temperatures increase the ECU automatically reduces ignition and adds fuel to make less power and prevent engine damage. With an upgraded intercooler (which actually works!) the air temperature will be consistently lower, meaning the ECU can operate the engine optimally for consistently high power and torque. This equals more FUN!
By taking a look at the above plot from IE, you can see how when the Golf R equipped with the stock intercooler is ran consecutively on the dyno, intake air temperature spiral out of control. Comparatively, when ran with the IE intercooler the intake temperatures only vary by a a handful of degrees between runs.
When seeing these results we just had to have one, so we reached out to IE and they sent one for testing. Being that IE are true car enthusiasts and proper engineers, coupled with their development location in thenUtah heat we had no doubt this would perform.
One of the key ingredients in the IE FDS intercoolers performance is their unique Flow Distribution System, what this means is that the intake plenum of the intercooler has vanes cast into them, distributing the air across the cooler. This results in the entire core being used for higher efficiency and better cooling gains. Remember those rumours of “size doesn’t matter, its how you use it”, the same rule applies for intercoolers and the IE cooler has a much larger core but also the FDS system allows them to utilise the size.
Just checkout the girth on the IE cooler vs. the stock intercooler. Another bonus of the IE intercooler is that it has a lower pressure drop than the stock intercooler, meaning when the stock turbo is mated to the IE intercooler it can work less to produce the same power.
The IE cooler retains all of the factory mounting points, and requires 0 cutting. Meaning your car can be put back to standard with the stock intercooler at anytime.
Here’s the logging results from the testing on our in-house Mustang MD-500AWD Dyno. After 10 consecutive rolling road runs the temperature drops from 25c to 18c, that’s a 5-10c increase over ambient with the IE cooler.
Conclusion: The IE Intercooler is an essential ingredient for helping your Golf 7R or Audi S3 perform at it’s optimum for extended periods of time, i.e. fast-road use, track or at the strip!
You can purchase your IE intercooler by following the below link…