Heat is the enemy. Heat saps performance, reduces engine life, and in extreme cases, can kill your motor. The AVO Front Mount Intercooler is the solution. Whenever you turn up the boost to get more power out of your turbocharged vehicle, increased amounts of heat and pressure is generated. One of the biggest bottlenecks is tiny and cheaply made stock intercooler. And even upgraded top mount intercoolers can quickly reach their flow limits, and suffer from heat-soak, an unavoidable situation created by the TMIC sitting on top of a hot engine while the car is not moving. The best answer to both problems is a front mounted intercooler. Back pressure in the system is lowered because of the larger intercooler core design made possible by the space available in the front of the car. And heat soak is not a problem as the FMIC is not sitting on top of a hot engine!
It is a little more complicated than that, though. You cannot simply throw any front mount intercooler onto your car. As a FMIC was not part of the original car design, space is very tight. AVO spent countless hours in R&D engineering the correct cast aluminium end tanks and aluminium piping. This was all so that you could retain your original foglights on your Legacy with a minimum of trimming on the inside of the bumper. Piping to and from the turbo and throttle were kept to as short a length as possible as well.
You can see the results here. Not only does the AVO FMIC allow you to keep your foglights, but with our included bumper beam spacers, allows you to keep your bumper beam as well. The cutaway photograph above shows the placement of the FMIC and hoses, and also shows the bumper beam as fitted with the FMIC. As you can see below, tolerances were quite tight in engineering the fit of this FMIC. The time and effort was worth it, as it has minimized any performance compromises and kept installation as simple as possible.
Our high-flow bar and plate intercooler also ensures that enough air goes past the intercooler and into your radiator to keep engine temperatures normal even under prolonged heavy-duty usage.
We could have made the task easier on ourselves by simply going with a smaller, thinner core, but that would have compromised the ultimate performance of this FMIC. It would have reduced the amount of internal surface area vital to cooling the hot pressurized air flow. The AVO intercooler is not an appearance item only, it is also an essential performance part. Power junkies will be able to make all the power they need, when they need it. Our heavy duty design goes past racing, however, as even more regular drivers that simply have big loads to tow can enjoy the torque benefits this system will allow, and the increased cooling necessary for engines under heavy loads for long time periods.
At 450hp, intake temperatures are around 150 degrees centigrade before the intercooler. By the time it has reached the other end, temperatures have dropped to 55 degrees centigrade! And there is only a 1.0psi drop in boost pressure, even at 500hp!
This illustration shows how the hot air flows in from the left and is cooled as it passes through the FMIC core. This hot air is coming directly from the turbo, and the cool air is going to the throttle body.
The chart shows how dramatic the temperature drop is with an AVO FMIC, and how little the pressure drop is. Measured directly aft of the turbocharger and right before the throttle body, temperatures have dropped over 100 degrees centigrade. And boost pressure has barely dropped 1psi, even at 6000rpm! This simply demonstrates how efficient our intercooler systems are.
Part of this is due to the aluminum bar-and-plate design, which is more efficient and better at cooling than the tube and fin design used on the stock TMIC. Some manufacturers prefer tube and fin designs for the fact that they are cheap to make and easy to produce in large numbers. But when it comes to both performance and longevity, there should be no such compromise!
AVO cast aluminum intercooler end tanks are specifically engineered for a smooth flow of air though the entire core, utilizing it to the full extent. This is important in cooling the hot air coming out of the turbo, as the more interior surface area used, the more cooling effect that is done. This also reduces back pressure in the system, another key issue in intercooler performance.
It is not only the end tanks that have been carefully thought out. We’ve engineered the piping to use as few joins as possible. This is to minimize blow-out failure when running at extreme pressure. The more joins that you use, the more areas in the system that can possibly fail.
As well, all of our aluminum components are powder-coated as well, which helps keep it clean for many years.
This dyno chart is taken from a Legacy GT fitted with the AVO FMIC, AVO450lgt turbocharger, an AVO TBE, intake, TGV deletes, fuel pump and injectors, and AVO engine management. 448hp was seen at the crank, or 368whp and 378ft/lbs of torque at the wheel (460ft/lbs at the crank). This was at 25psi at peak, with an average of 22psi.
Applied Models:
Legacy GT sedan: 2005-2009 [2.5-liter turbocharged]
Legacy GT wagon: 2005-2009 [2.5-liter turbocharged]
Legacy Spec B: 2005-2009 [2.5-liter turbocharged]
Legacy Outback: 2005-2009 [2.5-liter turbocharged]
Impreza WRX: 2008-2012 [2.5-liter turbocharged]
Forester XT: 2009-2012 [2.5-liter turbocharged]
