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| The Nisei intercooler fits behind the stock bumper beam believe it or not. |
For an intercooler we decided to go with Nisei Engineering’s part as our research showed it to be the largest cored intercooler that would fit in the nose of an Evo. The Nisei unit is a bar and plate intercooler using a Garrett core. Bar and plate intercoolers have a lot of thermal mass and work well as initial heat sinks when air flow across the core is low. Eric is a proponent of tube and fin intercoolers as he feels that that bar and plate units are heavy, block too much airflow across the core and don’t cool as well. Eric was skeptical that the Nisei intercooler, despite its much larger size would produce any more power.
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| The Nisei intercooler pipe kit necks down less by the turbo than the XS Engineering kit did, however it did not make any more power than the XS pipes. The Nisei kit has super high quality Hose Techniques nomex couplers and stainless T-Bolt clamps. |
We also installed Nisei’s charge pipes at this time which were basically the same as the XS parts. While we were at it, we also installed a Synapse Engineering DV valve to replace the factory compressor bypass valve. For a complete write up on this part, click here. The Nisei charge pipe kit comes complete with high quality Hose Techniques nomex silicone couplers and stainless steel T-bolt clamps.
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| Nisei pipe routing from the turbo. |
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| Around to the intercooler. |
When testing, despite its size, we were unable to extract any more power from the big Nisei intercooler. We were surprised, we felt that the big intercooler would have less pressure drop and more cooling but we were unable to use any bit more of an aggressive tune without the knock count going up. Perhaps it might take higher boost levels for a difference to show up or maybe Eric is completely right. Now the Nisei intercooler is a huge gain over the stock unit, it’s just not any better than the XS Engineering part and is a lot heavier to boot. Since the XS intercooler is no longer available, it’s a moot point.
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| Turbo to intercooler pipe and couplers. |
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| From the intercooler to the throttle body. We think that the Nisei charge pipe kit is one of the best on the market. |
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