What happens to a stock Mitsu EVO X front mount intercooler after 16,000 racing miles? It gets beat. The super thin fins of the stock intercooler cannot handle the debris that attacks it at the front of a car even through a grille. Mitsu attempts to crank up the cooling efficiency and reduce cost by making the fins thin, but durability goes down. This isn’t a problem because stock intercooler cores generally aren’t very good anyway so you’ll want to upgrade when you decide to get serious about power. Stock units are mass produced and are made of lower costing materials in an attempt to reduce cost. They cool decent, but they have pretty massive pressure drop. Sure a stock front mount is better than a top mount any day of the week, but however much horsepower you made with your stock intercooler, you could have made more with a larger well designed unit. It goes without saying to avoid the 45lb. boat anchors from China.
You can even see where the two upper vents are in the front bumper. Realistically most intercoolers will suffer some damage from this sort of use (150mph for several hours), but this thing is beat. Lift a stock intercooler next time you get a chance and see how light and fragile it is.
The intercooler is from this black MR that was used in the Gumball 3000 in China last year. Lanny who works at Design Craft was one of the drivers I think. I’ve been driving it around recently (stickers removed of course), but now it’s here at Cosworth for intercooler development. I think the twin clutch transmission is pretty sweet, but the R35 GT-R’s twin clutch trans is BETTER with the throttle down. In a parking lot, the MR is much smoother than the R35 GT-R’s tranny though. Anyhow, I can’t wait to take it to a track day and beat the shit out of it (after a trans cooler of course). It just needs a little more horsepower first…
