I'm gonna intercool my STS
 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...category=33742

It’s working well for a guy with a built 346 and 15psi thru a D1 (forcefed98) so I figure it should work just fine for me.

$300 shipped is pretty cheap so it may not be “the best” but as long as it doesn’t impede flow terribly and lowers temps reasonably I am happy. My car is not an all out effort so I figure I didn’t need an all out intercooler.

So this along with a splash of alky for extra fuel and I should be bling bling.

Another local car is being setup with an STS right now and inlet temps are 160+ at 5psi, prompting me to go for an intercooler.

Stay tuned for results. I hope to be able to do a full comparo of the 2 cars to see if I wasted $300 or not.

Not a bad price. Most IC's for the turbo buicks are going for upwards of $700 for a similar size.

Then there is the argument which is better - tube & fin or bar & plate... :punch:

LOL

I have an OBX account. That is my normal cost on the unit. I'm gonna call them up and see if they are on special or something.

What is the inlet/outlet diameter? Will it work with our piping on the STS?

3"

I will make it work. That's easy.

You can get silicone 2.5 to 3.0 transitions if you are using 2.5 pipe. Yeah I got fucked on the price and so did Kyle, but when we bought ours there wasn't 10 different vendors on ebay selling the same one for 275.00 + shipping, looks like a special to me or the market was flooded. I pick the latter, since this is what I was told. But damn did I get burned on the price:mad: :jest: Oh well its working awesome on my car, and the looks, welds and bar and plate construction are all top notch in my book:burn:
J:D

Hey frcefed98,

Did you get any before and after IATs with this thing?

I know you say it works great but was just seeing what kind of #s you have to show for it. I REALLY want to intercool my STS kit and this thing is a steal if it works well. Plus there is a bunch of other guys that I know would be interested in it. Thanks in advance :)

Yeah that pisses me off too..... it gets flooded with them right after we pay almost double that for them.......................................

You've got all that pipe surface area - what about
getting some steel sheet stock, shear off 1/2" strips,
and just weld some fins on the underside to enhance
the natural cooling?

If you can measure the tube wall temps at front and back
and the under-car air, that ought to tell if this would
help. Tube wall well above ambient, wants fins.

Just a thought.

What size is the intake tubing on the sts kit?

Actually that is a great idea. https://ls1tech.com/forums/images/sm...ech/gr_nod.gif

As for intercooling, in some what ways it is better than the Alky spray. It is always on, nothing to refill, etc.
I do not believe you will get any benifit from combining them if you plan on using Alky/Meth kits in the future.
Good luck with this, post up the results. :thumb:

I kinda dissagree. Even with the intercooler he will most likely still be above 100deg IATs so the meth wont make as much of a differance in cooling but should still drop him below 100deg which is a benifit even if it only dropped him 20deg. Mainly though it is the fueling, he is still going to benifit from that and have to do less tuning to make things work well in low boost settings vs high boost no? Bascially almost all the GN guys have intercoolers and then decide to run Alky in addition to and they have fantastic results so I don't see how this would be much different other than the temps are hotter pre-intercooler on the GN than would be on the STS kit due to the intercooling effect of the long piping.

As for the fins on ther intake pipe idea. It's funny, I thought about that one day but it just seemed so weird i dismissed it. I bet if the STS kit stays arounnd long enough someone is going to try it. LOL

the fins idea would work but you could only add some to about 1/4 of the pipe if you wanted to retain ground clearance, even if you didn't car about clearance only 1/2 the diameter of pipe is exposed, the rest is up against the car.

as for combining the IC and alky you have never used alky if you don't think they will work great together.

:werd: Think of it this way... Intercooler is so you can run 10 psi in low boost mode. Alky is so you can run 22psi in high boost mode :angel:

I still see IATs near 200 if I am on it all the time (so okay, I always see 200 IATs :) ) so the intercooler is a definite plus in my area. Alky is icing on the cake to allow me to crank up the boost to the limit for those special occasions. You know, like when I am awake and in the car.

I thought that the STS people tried intercooling and had poor results due to the restrictions...

Re: fins: Depending on how the pipes are set up, couldn't you put them on horizontally and thus retain ground clearance?

That's a good size intercooler. Mine is 4.7 deep x 14 x 30 or so.

I personally have never seen one post about any one using an intercooler on a sts setup as of yet.

as far as STS of course they will say it's not needed. it takes away from the ease and low cost of their kit to try to add one.

what they provide works fine, I always like things to work better.

yes you could put the fins horizontal but your only going to cover 1/4 of the diameter of the pipe. dunno how much good that would do.

I figured you would loose the cooling affect of the Alchy injection with a inter cooler. I thought there was a post recently about this but I can not find it. It was about a supercharger, so the same rules may not apply. I honestly would not know... Thank you for the correction. :)

I hate to bring up the "LAG" issue, but do you think there will be some if any above normal?

Now you got me thinking.https://ls1tech.com/forums/images/sm...h/gr_devil.gifhttps://ls1tech.com/forums/images/sm...h/gr_devil.gifhttps://ls1tech.com/forums/images/sm...h/gr_devil.gif

there may indeed be. thats to be seen.

luckily I have another local car that is also a 98 and has the exact same turbo and housing. so I can do some comparo's.

Why even bother with steel. I think you would get better results if the tube from the turbo to the intake manifold were made out of thin wall aluminum. Put a couple of trip plates through out the length of the tube to make the flow turbulent and you have a serious intercooler(500+ sq in of surface area).

Actually, STS will tell you intercool if you tell them you want to run more than 10 psi. They don't offer one, but will readily point you at a great progressive alky set up (Julio Dom and www.alkycontrol.com).

STS doesn't offer an intercooler because most of their market is driven by guys who slap a 5psi kit on an otherwise stock motor. That may be changing now that us nuts are coming out of the woodwork and making them solve problems for us :devil: