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Intercooler shroud

8156 Views 45 Replies 13 Participants Last post by  Forte5
Alright so I am making this thread so the one with the intercooler sprayer can stay on topic.

What I am taking from it is if we remove the shroud we will lower our iat's since it is blocking the intercooler pretty good. So should we remove it and test? I can do it today and see.

If a mod can please move the other posts to in here so we can keep both threads on topic that would be great!
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I am curious too! Mostly I'm worried about highway speeds.. it may help heat soak at stand still but does it take longer to cool it down once you're rolling?
I think today or tomorrow if I have time I am going to pull mine off and make a scoop that doesn't have the middle section on it. Just make one that directs the air to it.
I think the shroud is just a way of helping direct air better.. on a small surfs area.. I think high way speed will not be affected by the shrouds being removed it mite even help.. I think its the mid and slow speeds like sitting in traffic or just around town driving.. where the shrouds help catch as much air as possible.. I would love to see the data on the subject.. anything helps rite..
I will try to get some logs going for this. In traffic with me it doesn't matter since it heat soaks like crazy anyways. The normal speed on the fwy and when under WOT is where I would like it to work better
i like this idea, but if your plans are a FMIC, it would negate this information... i honestly am in to see this and give props to anyone that is willing to try this... but for me doing it, i wont as its just double work in the end for me.
I plan on a FMIC when I can afford one. Right now it looks like it will be end of summer or winter time when I can get one. So figured why not try and see what happens.
I never really logged a before and after on the same day so it is hard for me to say it made this much of a difference but just glancing at the intake temp. It appears to be lower than normal and not heat soak as fast. If you are sitting still, and there is a little draft of air. It will flow easier through the whole intercooler instead of just the top and bottom. according to a veloster thread, it makes the biggest difference driving slow or cruising around, at wot and high speeds
He said temps were about the same.
Another thing if you are planning on making a new shroud, my plans were to just make a wall on the right side of it to seal it up and if you want, you could take a piece of sheet metal or plastic and make a piece on a 45* angle on left side. Just cut out around crash bar. We don't need a full scoop/shroud like the stock one. I think he bottom and top of intercooler are sealed up anyways.
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BTW, looking forward to see what you come up with and how well it works. A fmic is not anywhere in my near future so making the stock one more efficient for cheap or free works for me.
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I can try making the right side sealed up first and see how it does. Doesn't hurt to try different things to see what helps. The stock setup is pretty good for just normal people but for us it doesn't do what we need
Alright I have my bumper off and measured how much room between the i.c is and the shroud and it's 3/4" clearance. So very very small amount of room for air to pass. I did take a few pictures close up of the shroud on the i.c to give a idea of how much room there is stock wise. I am going to take it off and take a few more pictures of it. I will post them in about 30 min to a hour
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Alright I have my bumper off and measured how much room between the i.c is and the shroud and it's 3/4" clearance. So very very small amount of room for air to pass. I did take a few pictures close up of the shroud on the i.c to give a idea of how much room there is stock wise. I am going to take it off and take a few more pictures of it. I will post them in about 30 min to a hour
mite as well install a sprayer wile you are in there.. :D love to see the photos
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Would be nice but I want to see what the effect is without the shroud first. I even took the i.c totally out and poured muriatic acid on it like I do for my a/c at the house and a ton of crap came off it. Then blew it totally out
Alright so I got everything buttoned back up and all is well no mess ups or anything breaking....good! When I decided to do this I figured why not take the whole i.c out and give it a bath and get all the crap out of it. Well I used muriatic acid like you use for pools and to clean the fins on your home a/c unit. Poured it and and wow the smoke from it eating all of the crap. Took a hose to it and it was a dirty brown coming from the fins. So now nice and clean.

Once I took the shroud off I didn't give it much thought to look at it until after I put everything back together. With the shroud on you only give the middle of the i.c and shroud 3/4" of room to breath. Well you will see in the pics that the shroud has a bar right in the middle!!! It stops the air from completely at one point. To me this was just put there to keep the shroud strong but also blocking air.

I did take the car on a little drive and where I usually do 50mph the way it was stock would reach 99-103* and that is around 4 miles of road non stop. Now with the shroud off it went down to 94-96* so it did help a bit to keep cooler. Of course when you slow down the i.c gets hotter but I am more worried about while driving. So I will try and get some data when I get onto the fwy tomorrow and see how it does then. So far it's working better

Here are the pics

Stock shroud


Shows how much room there is behind the crash bar


Now with it off




To help see how much more room the middle has


And then here is that stupid bar on the shroud

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Good pictures. I should of posted pictures before of it. But yeah way better with it off I think. Barely any air must get at the middle hey? Are you going to seal up the right side next? I think that will help then all the air the goes through the grille has no where to go other than through the rad and intercooler
Yeah I will probably do that this weekend. Want to see how it does tomorrow on the fwy. I will go get some sheet metal and make something to block it off. So far so good though!
I got scrap black 3/16" ABS sheets at work so I plan on making something out of that in the spring or summer.
Nice. I will try to whip something up this weekend and see what happens
Awesome job guys, this is much appreciated. I wont be doing an FMIC so anything to allow the stock to work better is a plus!
Good findings, guys. It does make wonder if there's a specific reason the factory engineers had for isolating the upper and lower parts of the intercooler (hence the reason for that bar). Forte5, I'm grateful you took pictures, as I'm not ready to start pulling my brand new car apart yet... :)

I'll be interested to see how things go tomorrow and what your findings are with blocking off the right side to shove more air in. I do wonder if blocking off the right side would reduce the airflow to the air filter area (either stock or SRI; I don't think the CAI would really be affected). Keep up the great exploratory work!
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