What should I log to determine the usefulness of an intercooler upgrade.

**brad** · 20-12-2013, 12:02 PM

Vehicle is a 2007 build Skoda Octavia 1.8tsi 118kw M6. It's been running a Bluefin stage 1 remap quite happily for the last 75,000km.

Recently I changed the coil packs to the Audi R8 units in the BG on this forum & realised afterwards that I was probably getting an intermittent misfire as the change resulted in a slight decrease in fuel usage.

I've decided that the intercooler should be changed because in hot weather the car feels a bit "doughy". Stock IC has a 32mm core. I'm going up to a 38mm OEM VW unit.

It occured to me that I should make some before & after logs with VCDS to see how effective the change is and add to the community pot of knowledge. What do I need to log that would be useful?

**Ryan_R** · 21-12-2013, 10:25 AM

Intake temperature would be a good start, maybe also Intake PSI.
The Polar FIS can show these parameters in real time in your dashboard screen.

**brad** · 21-12-2013, 12:20 PM

Thanks

I have the Kufatec E-MFA add-on. It shows boost pressure 4 different ways - not sure where it gets the signal from though.

Should sell it - never gets used.

I'll do the logs with VCDS.

**Ryan_R** · 21-12-2013, 12:49 PM

btw I'm assuming an expert will post soon with an even better answer. ^That's just what I would do.

**brad** · 21-12-2013, 12:59 PM

Socialist forum - everyone is allowed to be an expert

**parso_rex** · 21-12-2013, 08:46 PM

ok log the inlet temps obviously but you can also look at individual cylinder knock retard too. In saying that its a little hard to compare the figures you see today with any other day because there are too many variables. What you could do is monitor the retard pre intercooler swap under heavy load over a period and you'll see a trend of roughly how much knock retard and thefore timing is being removed and then when you change the intercooler the knock retard would ideally be less. If you're tuning a car it means you can now program the ECU to hopefully try and run more ignition timing and therefore produce more torque/power.

When we change an intercooler on an S3 or R you can run the car on the dyno quite a few more times than with a standard core before the power begins to fall away due to heat -its quite noticeable. Its worth noting that it won't necessarily give you any more power but it will allow the ECU to effectively allow the engine to produce more power on hotter days instead of it winding things back.