Front mount intercooler question

[Ruckus]

I agree the under the radiator routing is best. I did my custom one that way. I just did a side to side for a customer this passed week and only confirms my opinion. But corsa forza, agp, atm, and apparently this wagner all go under on both sides. So there ate probably more choices under the radiator assembly than inside to side. The core is the most important part though. Pressure drop has become a buzzword that anyone on the internet can recognize. Low pressure drop usually goes hand in hand with poor cooling in my experience. If you look at an expensive core thru the inlets it looks more like a water to air woth very small passages. Water to air have high pressure drop but cool very efficiently. It's not just the cold water that makes them effective it's the core design. They are just made for massive temp drips in a small package. The cheap cores have very large air passages and little pressure drop. The thing with fmic, its usually not hard to show big gains over factory setups even with cheap cores and bad design. But I've seen posts on here of people seeing the same or higher temps with EC and other cheap cores. The factory abarth setup seems to do a good job at cooling despite all its flaws regarding flow.

If core size is the most important the Wagner-Tuning wins as it has the biggest cooling area of all the FMIC available for our 500 Abarth. But it is only also the one using “tube-fin” design which is inferior compared to “bar-tube” that everyone is using. Any though on that?

[Saponetta]

Tube and fin typically flow well with low pressure drop. Thret weight less typically from a similar dimension bar and plate. They feel light. Different companies use different cores for their own reasons I'd imagine. Not just.prodiction cost. I have no testing to back all this up. But it's common knowledge. I've used both kinds on various cars. For small, high boost turbos, run near the edge of what boost they are even able to produce, I'd probably rather use a bar and plate. At that point, they essentially become hot air pumps. That's why a few e85 users on herestopped making torque with boost increases above like mid 20spsi but weren't knock limited on timing. Like I said, this is my opinion. But you also dont need much core capitcty for a 200hp car. I'd imagine all the extra core capacity we have on these fiats makes up for some of the cooling efficiency. I'd say use what kit seems most attractive to you. Plenty of evidence atm works great and people in this thread say it uses a Garrett core which are great. Most high end kits use bar and plate fwiw while most cheap stuff is tibe and fin.