justify the price difference please

[chris aka fonz]

Can any one tell me why i can get an intercooler , universal mind from a certain company which i wont put a link to as im not sure if im allowed for around £200 which is rated to 600 and one for 800bhp yet i have to pay big money for a big name like HKS or Greddy .

 

I worked for a company a while back which manufactured exhausts for Aston Martin , the Ford Mondeo st200 and Mongoose , Magnex oh and Micron Bike exhausts , all of which used exactly the same materials the same production line yet all branded differently and priced differently.

I cant see how intercoolers can be that different yet priced so different , you pay for the name but there must be other reasons .

 

Someone clever put me in the picture please , not saying id buy cheap as i no you get what you pay for just curious

[chris aka fonz]

Ok no replies yet , so ill make it a tad simpler

 

Anyone had a bad experience that they would like to share with the group about an intercooler that wasnt a big namer !

I know its hard but by talking about it may make it less painfull !

[Branners]

the internal design of the intercooler has a massive effect on the way it performs. People like HKS will have invested more in the design of the intercooler than the cheaper ones and so people will know that they will get a 'known design' which has been proven to work. If you buy a dirt cheap intercooler you could end up with crap end-tank design which wont be as efficient as the stock intercooler and will block airflow to the radiator.

 

If you can find pictures of the end tank designs on Paul E's SMIC replacements then you will see they are different and if you compare them to Chris WIlsons you will see that again its quite different.

 

HKS and the other suppliers do charge a huge amount for their ICs, and there will be much cheaper and equally efficient ones out there but you just wont know by simply looking at the intercooler so its a bit of pot luck really.

 

JB

[chris aka fonz]

thanks for the reply , ive heard when running high boost the end tanks can be blown off , is this true ?

[Scooter]

thanks for the reply , ive heard when running high boost the end tanks can be blown off , is this true ?

 

i thought this was with stock SMIC's?

 

All the aftermarket ones i've seen are alloy end tanks that i would say should survive a few PSI!

[Scooter]

Like branners said i think there are definitely IC's out there that are as good/good enough and far cheaper than the big name ones.

 

Yes HKS should put more money and development time into their products but they didn't seem to bother much with their induction kits, did they? Why should we presume their IC's are thoroughly tested for efficiency when they can't even sort out testing the filtration on a induction kit?

Did they really go through a process and fine tune the HKS mushroom to what they ended up marketing & selling...........

 

.......plus all these ic's being turned out i can't see the actual cores themselves being made by many different manufacturers as the process must be a specific and quite complex one i'd imagine. So many of these aftermarket IC's will have the same core type. Then its just down to design and welding which can be copied.