Chris,
No one said anything about ebay intercoolers in this thread, until your post, in which you brought up ebay intercoolers and stated that you'd not recommend them past 250hp. I'm sorry but I just don't see the educated insight in that statement. I don't doubt you've seen ones from ebay perform poorly before, we all have. But you can't let those couple speak for all of them. Also right there is where you basically grouped all ebay cores together, saying not to use cheap ebay cores past 250hp. But exactly like you said, EBAY is not a brand, but a store, so stating you wouldn't recommend ebay cores past 250hp is not a fair statement because there are many different kinds sold on there, both good and bad. I definitely do agree, that a lot of them on there are crap. Some trash core with advertised "internal fins" that don't do a damn thing, they are a line of single fins placed directly behind each other, and you could stare right through the end tank and out the other, and probably read a license plate from 50 feet away still. But there are also decent cores. I understand a lot of them are not the best designs, but not all of them. That is all I am trying to say.
Swanny about my friends car. It's a 2003. I can't tell you the specific mods as I don't know the mods exactly. But it has all the typical bolt ons, like exhaust, fmic and piping, intake. He also has HKS 280 cams. That's the main jist of it. The car was dynoed at Turbo Trix, and tuned by them, not sure what tuning method he currently has.
Here is the 3rd guy I knew, another local Yuma guy, who was the first of the 3 of us to do this.
http://forums.evolutionm.net/showthread.php?t=57404 Again he has a picture that shows the inside of the end tank, but it's too dark to see the inside very well. Tomorrow after work, I'll try to get a good picture of mine.
I am just speaking from my experience, and the experience my two friends have had with the intercoolers we purchased for cheap off ebay. Maybe some day when I slap on a GT42R, I will find that this core no longer is enough for me. And when that day comes, I will speak of my experience again. But as of now, I purchased a cores that has many turbulators which are scattered to disrupt the air to aid in cooling by both slowing down the flow, and scattering the air so more of it actually makes contact with the surface. So far so good.
This is Brandon signing off. G'nite Twin Cities.