Is an intercooler necessary? No. Plenty of guys make a lot of power without one with no problems. Will an intercooled setup make more HP then a non intercooled setup with the same amount of boost? Yes. You can run a more agressive tune with cool air. Your choice.

 

plus 9 to 1 with some good boost will require good fuel............

 

Buy an S-Trim with an aftercooler. Basically same thing as a intercooler. Creates a nice charge of dense cold air into your engine. Depending on boost you will get a significant HP increase.

Vortech lists there aftercooler on their site at around $1750.00. I think it would be cheaper just to buy kit with it already included.

I run 10lbs with no inter/aftercooler with no problems. But if I had an extra $1750 I wouldnt hesitate a second to go buy one.

 

What kind of compression do you run??


The reason I would buy a Vortec is because of how cheap you can find them, and spend the rest on supporting mods.

 

I noticed your from Lyndhurst Ohio. I live about 20 minutes south of Cleveland in an area called Brecksville. Heard of it?

My car's stock compression is 9.0:1 I have a stock motor with the blower bolted on to it. Stock Bottom end and stock h/c/i. According to my Blower Compression Ratio chart here at full 10lbs of boost I am at 15.1:1 C/R.

 

yeah i have heard of brecksville not to far from me at all, you know where solon is? they have a car show every tues at the movie theater lot, you shouold come up there.


what kind of numbers does your car put down??

 

Ya, I have heard of Solon. I've been down there a few times actually. I'll look into attending that car show. I love going to car shows.

My car is getting Dyno tuned at the end of march. I will know the exact numbers in about 2 weeks.

 

where are you going to tune?? Dynotec??

 

Big Shot Dyno in Hudson right of RT.303. Its about 25 minutes from me.

Where is DynoTec at? I have heard of it but not familair with it. All my friends Dyno at Big Shot Dyno thats why I am going there.

 

1800 dollars for a small vortech air-to-water intercooler is a RIP OFF! I built an intercooler for a friends car for under 400 bucks. OBX intercooler off ebay and some home made charge piping. This is on a friends stock car with AFR 165's and an S-trim, full exhaust. It made 362 RWHP on stock pullies, and 395 RWHP on the same pullies intercooled, plus cruising on the street it no longer gets heatsoaked. With a bit smaller pulley we brought the boost up to 10 psi and 430 RWHP with 420 RWTQ.

It only takes basic hand tools to do work like this. I used a chop saw, a dremel, a welder, some generic U and J bends and some silicone couplers, and we had the entire thing done in one afternoon. If you don't have access to a welder it's easy to just cut the pipes where you want and take them to a muffler shop and have them weld it.

 

1800 is a rip-off. You can get it a few hundred dollars cheaper at other Vortech retailers actually.

 

I have had the Aftercooler on my car for about 3 years and it has been trouble-free. What I really like about it is being able to run ice in it on my very infrequent trips to the track. I am only using the stock pulleys on my SQ Trim and currently rn 24 degrees of total timing, so I bought it mainly as a safety device to help prevent head gasket issues.

I beat on it pretty regularly, and have not had any issues to date. It's a good investment, but it looks like the price has gone up since I bought mine.

One thing I did with mine that I really thought looked better was to cut a hole in the engine bay and run the hoses to and from the water box inside of the fenderwells. It looks much cleaner, kind of OEM.