Does anyone know if this is a good core or not?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/TURBO...=p4506.c0.m245

 

Its hard to believe that you would get good quality for $124.99 where as bahn brenner sells kits for upwards of $600...
I could be wrong but I just wouldn't want to have to buy something that would have to be replaced, or not perform like it should

 

depends on what 'good' means. is it the best? no where near. will it work for a stock turbo or k04? sure, maybe even for an elim turbo it would be ok. but thats all it is, is OK. not GOOD.

all ebay no name intercoolers are going to be not a efficient as a more expensive, better quality one. if you want an intercooler that doesnt have a large pressure drop and cools efficiently for its size, expect to pay $300+ for the intercooler alone.

 

I think when you pay 600 for a kit 400 of it gos in there pocket. Its probably closer to 550 gos in there pocket. You are paying for the name. To this day I have not seen a inter cooler fail or have a huge psi drop. The only thing I would worry about is the quality of the welds. If it has the same design as the 600 one and good welds, guess what your going to have the same effect.

Its like buying a ring, you can buy it new for 600 or go to the pawn shop and buy it for 150. Its the same flipping ring but you dont get to have the name with it. Same thing with buying a car. You can buy a car new for 30k as soon as you drive it home, now its worth 20k. Look at some of the CAI, some are 300 and others are 75. Its the exact same thing but one has a brand name on it. As for me if it looks the same works the same smells the same well I'm going with the cheaper one as its the same fing thing. Plz dont flame me, this is how I been getting around and I have never had my nonbrand cheap stuff fail.

 

Just remember the ebay one isnt fitted for your car, so it'll take some bashing and cutting to get it in there properly, and probably some fabrication as far as mounting components go. That also drops the cost, but adds to install time. So just something you may wanna keep in mind.

 

Do you reallly think a core, end tanks, aluminum pipes, hoses, clamps and labor to weld it all up is going to cost $50? Why dont you price all of those parts out for us and tell us what you come out with.

No company is not going to mark up a FMIC kit by 1000%. If they did that a cheap kit that cost $400 to make is going to sell for $4k.


Its not the fact that a cheap core is going to fail or have a huge PSI drop, the fact is that they use a cheap core design(low density) which means its not going to bring the IAT's down like a high density core will do. The cheaper cores also tend to use cheap tube/fine cores which actually need to be nearly twice the size to do the same job cooling as a bar/plate core which cost more.

So a cheap fmic kit doesn't mean your going to have the same effect as a higher priced well built fmic kit. If you tested a cheap Ebay core against a ER core you would actually see a huge difference. A friend of mine has ran 3 different FMIC kits on his Elim kit B6 and he saw a huge difference between a cheap FMIC kit, a custom thick Garrett Core and the ER FMIC kit he is running now. Hands down the ER did a way better job reducing the IAT's and the boost response was also much better and this is because of its design.

As they say, dont judge a book by its cover. So just because a FMIC looks the same doesn't mean it is actually the same.

 

^ werd

 

The core in this pic looks like a total turd.

 

Do you realy think some one is sitting there makeing these fmi. The quality of the materal I understand. The company buys a **** load of the materal (metal). Then you have robots peace and weld it together. They can make mmmm say 100 of them in an hour. Then they sell each one for 600. If they sell all 100 of them thats 60,000. All in all yes it cost them 50 bucks to make a 600 fmi.

 

any good quality bar and plate intercooler is going to be hand welded. my garrett core IC had hand etched serial numbers in it. they do not make 100 of them in an hour. probably closer to 8 or 10 per hour. maybe some of the garbage ebay intercoolers are made that way, but they dont even hold a candle to a good intercooler performance wise. besides the fact that your estimates on what it takes to make them arent anywhere near accurate.