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Top Mount, or front is better?

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 7:01 am
by GarthW
Have been looking at the Callaway intercooler setup which you all know sits top mount above plenum chamber.

I noticed alot of the intercooler piping is alot shorter than a front mount setup, so was wondering is top mount setup more efficient?

I thought maybe there would be more loss of power from a front mount due to longer piping lengths?

Also would a top mount intercooler suffer from hot ambient tempatures from being high in the engine bay?

Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this :)

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:28 pm
by Greg Gordon
A top mount intercooler is not more efficient. Unless it's sealed from the engine bay and has very effective ducting it can suffer from heat soak when the car is sitting still or moving slowly thus becoming more of an interheater.

The advantage of a top mount is easier packaging. If you are a company like Subaru, who ships cars to the U.S. in what is essentially a kit form to be assembled at a U.S. factory a top mount solves a lot of problems. This way they can ship the complete engine,turbo, intercooler and all as one unit and it's installed as one unit during final assembly.

In Callaway's case, the location of the top mount was probably used because it's tough to route pipes to and from the area forward of the A/C condenser on a GTV6. On a Milano it's no problem. On a GTV6 it will require a lot of cutting. I suspect the Callaway top mount does have heat soak issues. Greg Armstrong deals with this by converting the Callaway unit into a liquid to air unit with a front mounted heat exchanger.

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 1:16 pm
by Mats
What Greg said plus this: The volume of the pipes going to and from the intercooler can be viewed as not interesting. What I mean is that the volume that the turbos pump per second makes the volyme in the pipes look pretty insignificant.

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 7:15 pm
by GarthW
To Greg and Mats, thankyou very much :D

I'm slowly learning and to be able to just log onto this forum and get a detailed explanation like that is amazing, so thanks guys! :P