So I've been trying to figure out which of my two intercoolers is the one to stay with. The one off the old car is a SEAT sport - a large twin pass tube and fin with offset entry/exit of 52.50mm I.D seen in the last two pics.
The new cars one was a bit of a mystery till I found this old post:
Meet my Polo!
I new it was from APR but have since found out that they were APR's Golf Mk4 GTI intercooler. They were modded to fit the Polo as Guy Harding used one in a Polo tarmac rally car and then made a few and sold them. In the pic its the long single pass with short vertical fins. You can see where its end tank was modded to help it fit.
The other intercooler in the pic is a Forge twin pass. They were always touted as the one that produced the best cooling but from what I can gather this came at the detriment of flow restriction - something the APR doesnt seem to suffer from.
Now the SEAT sport (final two pics) I've run in the past is a bit of an unknown as I've never seen flow tests for it, but being a pretty a pretty thin cored twin pass with small offset entry/exit of only 50mm, surely couldnt outflow the APR. I've been driving around monitoring ambient vs inlet air temps as the new car has a scan gauge fitted and being able to see iAT's in real time is great. Yes the APR heatsoaks in traffic but not in a dissimilar way to the SEAT so I dont think there's much to seperate them there. The APR also fills the bottom grill but doesnt obscure any part of the radiator north of the crash bar so might actually help RE water temps. And on that I have noticed that this car does run a tad cooler than the last car that had the SEAT despite also having an A/C core, still running the water to oil heat exchanger that should drag water up if anything when up to temps and not having any blanking to fill the voids around the radiator. So there may be something in that. But if it flows 432 cfm at 48 inches then its well above the Forge which is a similar design to SEAT so should be the go. I'll have to have a proper dig around under the car but the APR also looks to have a 2/1/4in entry and a 2 inch exit which should be pretty easy to take out to 2/1/4in space permitting. So I think APR intercooler it will be.
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