Product Review: SSAutoChrome Intercooler

[PHOENIX]

Please post your personal experiences with this product and the company who built and sold it to you. Pros and Cons will help fellow mr2 owners in the market for this type of product make there purchasing decision. Posting pictures installed in this section would be great.

SSAutoChrome
http://www.ssautochrome.com/search.i...ySku=MR2BRT_IC

- 100mm thick core
- stainless 2.5 inch plumbing kit
- all hardware included
- greddy style core
- part no. mr2usa

[PHOENIX]

Pictures Courtesy of Touge-MR

[Mekkahfire]

The quality of this kit actually suprised me. The clamps and couplers it comes with are high quality, the welds on the intercooler (are huge, but) are well done.

The only downside is that it requires you use 2 of your OEM couplers near the 2 elbows of the piping. Kind of lame if you ask me, a "kit" should be a complete OEM replacement, but hey, 400 dollars beats 850 for the HKS.

This core is niiice and beefy in size. It also mounts correctly. Nice and firm right up against the port for the vent. The 3 brackets on the front are for mounting the stock fan which is a POS, so ill be using them to mount a spal.

[canadam]

Does anyone else have opinions from their personal use of the XS Power and/or SSAC Intercooler setups ?

Does anyone know if the pipes included in this kit have issues with clearing the stock X-Brace ?

KO Racing uses an XS Power core with upgraded pipes, and sell it as a kit. They also offer block off shrouds for the vent.

From their site:

Originally Posted by KO Racing

XS Power intercooler core with KO Racing pipes, hoses, clamps, spal fan, fan shroud, and recirculation shield. The use of this intercooler kit will greatly improve flow to the engine over the stock intercooler. The XS Power core has been dyno proven to flow better even than the Greddy core it was designed after. Upgrading the intercooler doesn't ususally increase power by itself, but will greatly improve the recovery rate and decrease the liklihood of heat soaking, and can improve the efficiency of the intake track when used in conjunction with other upgrades like larger turbochargers.

The pipes are heavy duty 16 gage 2.5" stainless steel pipes fully polished and TIG welded together by KO Racing with large beads rolled in the end to prevent blowing them off under boost. The clamps used are constant tension fully lined worm drive clamps made from stainless steel as well. These heavy duty clamps evenly clamps around their entire circumference and the spring packs on the adjustment screws maintain that tension through all temperature and pressure extremes.

The way these pipes are routed allows the use of the widely popular TRD strut tower brace, but does require the bracket holding the factory hot pipe to the cylinder head to be removed. The image above of this kit installed in the car shows a KO Racing hot pipe installed, but it is not included with the kit standard. If you would like the hot pipe as well, it is listed elsewhere in this section of our online catalog.

KO Racing IC Shroud
KO Racing IC Kit
KO Racing IC Pipes Only
KO Racing Hot Pipe

[Mekkahfire]

They have no issue clearing the stock Xbrace.. Yes, i really had this SSAC/XSpower kit.

[ixtlann]

This kit seems ot work fantastic, minus a missing couple or 2 , the piping doent hit any thing and the fitment is ok, also worth mentioning is that ur stock fan can bolt to it. i really recomend this upgrade

[MR2SW22]

I bought this "kit" on ebay, it was missing 2 hoses which i agree is totally lame, but i only paid $150 for the IC pipes, and clamps with 4 hose connections. Personally if i could go back in time i would have bought the complete real "kit" from EMS, right now it's only $400 i think, with a nice huge 9"puller fan, the shroud (which looks cool and works GREAT!) and a mount for the fan. This IC looks great, so far on stock boost with a few bolt on mods like intake, DP, it's working so good i can get out of the car after a 20min drive on the street at 50mph the whole way, and touch the IC and it's ice cold, although it's 52-58 degrees during the day out here. can't wait to turn up the boost and see if it was worth every penny.

[PHOENIX]

for those of you interested in this intercooler, please read this thread first.....

eBay IC cores: for low power only

[MR2SW22]

Originally Posted by PHOENIX

for those of you interested in this intercooler, please read this thread first.....

eBay IC cores: for low power only

+1 this is a good read, and im only going for 250-260whp so this is find for me, if i get into the high 200's whp i will need water injection to keep temps down.

[squirrelyT]

i thought it was a good product for the price when i bought (about 150) cant give a perfomance review cause i didn't get to run the factory gen3 intercooler when i swaped engines. vs. this ssac cooler. the only thing that i think needs to go is the pipping and couplers. couplers look to be cheap material and radiator hose clamps. pipping is ok its aluminum what else could you ask for, but they give you these what look to be reducers that i think kinda suck. then i had to use zip ties to hang the stock fan, but now i have a 8in spal fan. so all in all id say just get the intercooler its self (100) then get a quaity pipping,couplers and clamps and an 8 or 10in fan. then BAM there you go!