There seems to be a debate of which is superior bar & Plate vs. Stuffed tube design. This may get ugly. I wil start off with this much they weigh double of what a stuffed tube design does (thats being generous too). NEXT?

 

As I understand it a bar/plate design for a given volume (of same dimensions) is going to remove more heat from the air charge than a tube/fin would. Which in the end is the primary purpose of the intercooler, no?

But definitely they are heavier as you mentioned, and the airflow to anything behind the intercooler isn't going to be as good normally.

Also by virtue of their construction the bar and plate are supposto be "stronger", etc. vs. the tube/fin - e.g. if you hit a rock, bugs or such it will not do as much damage to your intercooler.

 

The bar plate design is a misunderstood concept. If you put a tube thickness of .030 next to a bar which is roughly .1875 X .3125 heat the two of the up which do you think will cool faster? The two probably equal at feeding whatever sits behind the intercooler because tube thickness is about the same as bar thickness. NEXT?

 

The one with the greater mass will of course take longer to cool to ambient - but it will also take longer to heat up. Is the heatsink effect of the materiel itself really relevant though? And if it is, then wouldn't it be worthwile to point out that the heavier one will also take longer to heat up - so if the heat capacity of the material is an issue than the heavier one would be an advantage in say a dragstrip situation where you can start out with a cool intercooler?

But I still don't see how the heat capacity of the material is relevant - Once you are driving around you are going to have wayyy more heat input than the intercooler by virtue of acting as a heatsink itself can keep up with - as the intercooler "cools" more heat is added - so it's a matter of heatflow, not heat capacity - whichever intercooler can remove more heat (to the atmosphere) is superior. And again, from everything I have *read* (again, no firsthand knowledge) it seems for a given set of dimensions the bar and plate will remove more heat to the atmosphere than an identical fin/tube?

 

You mention something about a heavy duty built. OK with you so far lets talk about construction both types are heated in whats called a braze oven. This fuses the claded aluminum that the units are constructed of. The tube fin disign will seal itself before the header is intreduced. The bar and plate design is not it takes the four seperate pieces to be brazed before that type of tube is sealed as well as it having to braze to the header. When these are pressure tested they may pass just like tube and fin but; over time as heat cycles through the core they tend to warp flat plates and when thermol expansion occures it has roughly 26,000 psi which if there is any impurties or bad braze spots in the core it will tend to pull apart. So instead of just having the tube to header leak to worry about you would have every part of the unit to wory about. Thats not counting if you start picking up small rocks or stuff that could ding the core up.

 

Jimmy-
obviously you prefer tube/fin for whatever reason. Although you say the bar/plate style is more involved to construct, that doesn't make it weaker. I have used many spearco bar/plate ICs with out a failure.

Also, you started out saying that because the bar/plate is heavier it will cool off slower.. however, chrisB is correct that once in equilibrium, it doesn't really matter.. if anything the heavier unit could have an advantage for drag racing, but I think that is not a big deal. The nature of an IC makes it transfer heat very quickly.

It seems that for a given IC volume the bar/plate flows better through the charge side, but not the radiator side(if thats what you wanna call it). luckily, our fbodies are bottom feeders so this is not an issue. However on a car that gets its cooling air from the front, a bar/plate could cause issues.

 

Not really an issue for cooling flow the bars on a bar plate arent that much different than the tube as far as height goes. So flow through is not a big deal with either. As far as construction goes if you go with the unit that has more pieces the greater chance you have that something can go wrong not that it will. There is split reactions around the office about which is greater at disspersing heat.