Mk6 GTI How Much Power do you get from a FMIC Front Mount Intercooler

Key Takeaways

hello everybody i'm mark 6 matt yes i know i have actually changed the name on this channel it used to be matt pierce which is my name but i changed it to mark 6 matt now i did this because i realized that this channel is going to only be a car specific channel i realized this because of the recent videos that i posted i posted a video game car video which no one watched and i also posted a vlog video at the drag strip which no one also watched so i realized that you guys come here for a specific type of content so that is the content i am going to make and that is the reason i changed the name to mark 6 matt this also coincidentally is the name of my tick tock account and my instagram which are linked down below and on my channel page anyways today's video is about this now to the inexperience they might not know what this is this ladies and gentlemen is a front mount intercooler it looks kind of like a radiator and it does a similar job it is designed to cool things off and front mount intercoolers are only used in turbo applications for the obvious reason that they are designed to cool the air that comes out of the turbo but in this video specifically we're going to be talking about whether you need to upgrade that specifically for the gti so the first thing i'm going to do here is pop the hood and now we can see the motor now right down in here you really can't see it too well but there is an oem intercooler that comes with the car now this intercooler of course is designed to pull the air off that comes out of the turbo but when we're looking to make more power out of our car a replacement intercooler can actually greatly increase our power along with some other added benefits that are extremely important now i don't know why volkswagen did this but they decided to stuff the intercooler in between the radiator and the ac compressor which really doesn't make it super effective and it's also pretty small but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work at all upgrading your intercooler on your gti isn't going to make a massive difference in power in fact a vast number of people with stage two gti's actually don't run front mount intercoolers at all and a lot of people claim that you only really get a power benefit if you have an upgraded turbo with your front mount intercooler now this is a hot topic of debate in the community and we really don't have any numbers to prove either side but there is one benefit of this front mount intercooler that i have that you really can't deny and that is that it certainly helps cool off the air going into the motor a lot more effectively of course the air comes from our intake here into the turbo where it is compressed and when it comes right out of the turbo since the turbo uses the exhaust to compress the air the air is extremely hot and needs to be cooled off where of course it would either go to the stock intercooler or the upgraded one which i have now the one that i have right here is the arm front mount intercooler it's a budget friendly intercooler that works pretty well and i think it looks pretty good too but of course the hot air runs through these tubes and is cooled off by these fins as the air rushes by and on this side it is much colder and it flows right up through this into the intake manifold and into the motor when i installed my front mounted intercooler i immediately noticed a difference in temperature i mean i could see it on the data that i was looking at on my cob access port my intake air temperatures had dropped and they also dropped a lot faster when i started doing a pull and in general my oil temp on the motor was actually colder all the way around which is actually a huge benefit especially if you like to drive your car spirited quite a bit you always want to watch your oil temperature because if you get your oil temperature too hot you can damage your motor so i noticed a severe drop in oil temperature which means the motor in general is running cooler because there is cooler air going into the motor so there must be some sort of power increase happening there because the air going into the motor is literally physically colder now whether that power increase is 2 horsepower 5 horsepower or 10 horsepower it really is up to dyno testing which of course i haven't seen any between you know turbo upgrades and not turbo upgrades on these cars but i know for a fact at least there is some sort of power gain and other gains to be had such as maybe some looks because i think they look pretty cool and of course having a motor that runs a little cooler but in general i think the front mount intercooler is a great upgrade for these cars the motor just really likes to have an upgraded intercooler to be honest but you don't necessarily need it in fact you can upgrade the turbo on this thing and still not need an upgraded intercooler technically although it would probably greatly appreciate it let's be honest anyways guys i'm mark six man check out my other videos check out my tic toc my instagram i hope this video sort of helped you guys maybe make a decision on whether or not you should upgrade your intercooler but yeah thank you so much for watching and i'll see you guys in another video goodbye