HS Marston Intercoolers - Price and supplier info thread
Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 8:44 pm
As part of my research into the spec for my car the intercoolers were another thing which seemed to be an expensive and time consuming part to source.
KWE wanted over £1k for their “untested in the UK” set and the only other one we knew of was the HS Marston’s ones that Classba and Brett have which, again, had been posted as costing around £5k-6k.
Now the company I work for is an Aerospace company and I know that HS Marston’s are umbrella’d under “UTAS” which is another Aerospace company, so I went to them direct and asked how much a set of their IC’s would be direct to myself. After a whole bunch of head-scratching (they couldn’t find the original spec) we discovered that it was actually a company called Radtec who had designed the original spec and Marston’s had only supplied a set of cores, nothing else (I’d assumed they supplied the whole finished item). After telling me the price of the cores they supplied (around £2000) they passed me on to Radtec who actually sell the finished item.
So Radtec get the Marston’s cores and your OEM ICs and the basically swap the cores. There’s a slight size difference between the Marston’s/OEM cores so some work has to be done modifying the end tanks to fit the bigger Marston core. After it’s welded and pressure tested you then have the choice of an anodised finish or a raw metal finish.
So, the important bit, the price - £4200 for a set but they will drop that if there was a group buy of these. All the prices are in the e-mail I’ve attached from Keith Lycett who is the point of contact for Radtec ***EDIT - As of Sept 2017 the price is now £3000 if you give Radtec your old IC's to re-use***
Now we know the price of the Radtec/Marston’s we have a choice between them, the KWE’s (see here for my review thread) and potentially Sportmile.
The KWE intercoolers will make the power, are much cheaper and work well on the road however, as there are no fans fitted and the core is thick metal, they soak up lots of heat from repeated runs in static air (i.e. dynos, drag strips etc) and struggle to cool down again afterwards (again in static air, not on the road). Plus they stop making power by 6500rpm as they seem to be limited air flow wise – So cheap and do the job but suffer when the car isn’t moving.
The Marston’s are will flow the same power figures and are much better thermally and at high flow levels but they’re 4x the cost – So expensive but very good thermal performance.
Sportmile are an unknown yet but Doug at MRC is very excited by them and from the results he’s seen so far of the development version, he seems to think that they will be even better than the Marston’s. So depending on cost that’s what I’ll be looking at if I decide to change. We know already that they’re much thicker and that the two Aux rads have to be removed and replaced by a bigger centre Rad instead to create space for the IC’s – So an unknown!
The core sizes are as follow for those interested –
OEM – 225 x 290 x 80
Marston’s – 270 x 275 x 76
KWE – 255 x 280 x 95
Sportmile – Unknown but much thicker than any of those above Doug said.
KWE wanted over £1k for their “untested in the UK” set and the only other one we knew of was the HS Marston’s ones that Classba and Brett have which, again, had been posted as costing around £5k-6k.
Now the company I work for is an Aerospace company and I know that HS Marston’s are umbrella’d under “UTAS” which is another Aerospace company, so I went to them direct and asked how much a set of their IC’s would be direct to myself. After a whole bunch of head-scratching (they couldn’t find the original spec) we discovered that it was actually a company called Radtec who had designed the original spec and Marston’s had only supplied a set of cores, nothing else (I’d assumed they supplied the whole finished item). After telling me the price of the cores they supplied (around £2000) they passed me on to Radtec who actually sell the finished item.
So Radtec get the Marston’s cores and your OEM ICs and the basically swap the cores. There’s a slight size difference between the Marston’s/OEM cores so some work has to be done modifying the end tanks to fit the bigger Marston core. After it’s welded and pressure tested you then have the choice of an anodised finish or a raw metal finish.
So, the important bit, the price - £4200 for a set but they will drop that if there was a group buy of these. All the prices are in the e-mail I’ve attached from Keith Lycett who is the point of contact for Radtec ***EDIT - As of Sept 2017 the price is now £3000 if you give Radtec your old IC's to re-use***
Now we know the price of the Radtec/Marston’s we have a choice between them, the KWE’s (see here for my review thread) and potentially Sportmile.
The KWE intercoolers will make the power, are much cheaper and work well on the road however, as there are no fans fitted and the core is thick metal, they soak up lots of heat from repeated runs in static air (i.e. dynos, drag strips etc) and struggle to cool down again afterwards (again in static air, not on the road). Plus they stop making power by 6500rpm as they seem to be limited air flow wise – So cheap and do the job but suffer when the car isn’t moving.
The Marston’s are will flow the same power figures and are much better thermally and at high flow levels but they’re 4x the cost – So expensive but very good thermal performance.
Sportmile are an unknown yet but Doug at MRC is very excited by them and from the results he’s seen so far of the development version, he seems to think that they will be even better than the Marston’s. So depending on cost that’s what I’ll be looking at if I decide to change. We know already that they’re much thicker and that the two Aux rads have to be removed and replaced by a bigger centre Rad instead to create space for the IC’s – So an unknown!
The core sizes are as follow for those interested –
OEM – 225 x 290 x 80
Marston’s – 270 x 275 x 76
KWE – 255 x 280 x 95
Sportmile – Unknown but much thicker than any of those above Doug said.
