Mike/A.W.E.

Wiki definition of an Intercooler:

"An intercooler, or charge air cooler, is an air-to-air or air-to-liquid heat exchange device used on turbocharged and supercharged (forced induction) internal combustion engines to improve their volumetric efficiency by increasing intake air charge density through isochoric cooling. A decrease in air intake temperature provides a denser intake charge to the engine and allows more air and fuel to be combusted per engine cycle, increasing the output of the engine."

The bottom line is that heat is your biggest enemy with a Turbocharged car. The cooler you can keep your intake charge, the more power you will make. It is as simple as that.

How do you fight heat? First you start by installing a more effective unit. One that is designed without having the pressures of your accounting department looking over your shoulder telling you to make it cheaper to increase the bottom line. While the OEM units from Porsche are ok, they are by far not the ideal solution.

That is where we come in.

We started by collecting data on our Mustang MD-AWD-500-SE AWD dynamometer, on the street, and on various race tracks, using dual Omega DPi temperature meters outputting to the dyno's integrated data acquisition, and via a portable lab grade datalogger. Several runs were made recording temperatures and pressures before and after the stock and AWE Tuning intercooler assemblies and then averaged, with graphs of the changes shown below. All tests were done on our in house 2007 997TT with a prototype 700S turbo kit installed. 93 octane fuel was used for all tests.

Below: Temperature drop is the measurement of how much heat the intercooler is able to remove from the intake air. The higher the temperature drop, the denser the air charge, resulting in more power and less tendency for detonation in the cylinders. Our design was able to hold intake air temperatures to a maximum of just 20F higher than the start of the run vs a 65F climb with the stock intercoolers.




Below: Large intercoolers can do well in reducing intake air temperatures, but they can also introduce a lot of restriction to the intake air. That restriction will result in power loss even with the improved temps. Too much intake flow restriction means the turbo cannot deliver as much boost to the engine. Bigger is not always better with intercoolers. Our design excells in temperature drops and also in how pressure restriction is minimized to levels 1 psi less than the stock configuration.



Below: Power test of our intercooler design vs stock. Installing our intercooler system reduced heat tremendously, to produce a cooler, denser intake air charge, resulting in a very nice increase in power at high rpms (nearly 16 crank horsepower at peak when converting from the dyno sheet wheel power measurement). Even more impressive was the additional low end power released by reducing the pressure drop through the cores.



Developed in house by our Engineering staff.





Complete kit.







Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something today.

TB993tt

Any "tendency" for detonation on a 997tt will be dealt with by the Bosch ECU which will alter timing very quickly as soon as knock onset is detected, what a better than stock intercooler does is keep the ECU running in a better (for power ie advanced timing) table, increased IAT bumps teh ECU onto the next band. An ignition cutout will interrupt the ignition way before detonation occurs....

Any measurements you take on your dyno are only valid for the set amount of cooling airflow your rig produces it may or (more likely) may not be representative of what actually happens on the road where the stock 997tt intercoolers perform well enough to allow 530PS at 6500rpm in 20Deg C air in 6th gear - yours may or may not do better ?
Still awaiting some real back to back stock vs tuner testing of ICs from ANY tuner, only crew to have ever done this were a motley crew of RLers on a 993tt and the results were very interesting......

Todd/A.W.E.

Toby,

My offer to send you a set of ICs still stands.

I just need you to test them in an unbiased venue, like I requested previously. Testing on RS Tuning's engine dyno is not unbiased since they sell Secan coolers.

You finally game to do this?

TB993tt

Todd, many thanks for the offer, I was sort of hoping a manufacturer would do this comparison: on track stock versus aftermarket, heat soak runs logged on data logger or even maximum IAT obsevered...

I am waiting for Durametric to produce a reader for the 997GT2 as without this I cannot see IAT.... Some "pals" are having some I/Cs made in Europe by a reputable builder ( the visual difference is they have 15 channels versus 13/12 for all other aftermarket units FWIW) which come in around 4000Euro - I am waiting on results from these also....