PRL VS. MISHIMOTO INTERCOOLER

FK8_K20c1

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I had the mishimoto intake for the Si. It sounded fantastic, fit great, and was high quality. I did not take any data on its performance but I really liked it.
I had 3 intakes on my Type R.
- prl hose w/high flow filter
-mishimoto intake
-prl hvi

I datalogged the hell out of all 3. The hottest temps were on the mishimoto intake following by the oem intake. Coldest temps were provided by the PRL HVI.
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Anyone with any real Data on this ? It seems PRL is better choice, just wish they offered the black version which for street is nice to give it a more sleeper type like (which is hard given the FK8 crazy exterior look)... But as far as gains and performance standpoint ?? Any real info here..... If none and they are the same then My only guess would be preference and pricing which PRL seems to win here , since it seems they are the easier company to deal with as far as customer service goes.

And that Mishimoto Intake was a big turn off for me. Why put out such a crappy product which performs worse them OEM, smh!! That is worrisome and makes me question their engineering team.
 

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Anyone with any real Data on this ? It seems PRL is better choice, just wish they offered the black version which for street is nice to give it a more sleeper type like (which is hard given the FK8 crazy exterior look)... But as far as gains and performance standpoint ?? Any real info here..... If none and they are the same then My only guess would be preference and pricing which PRL seems to win here , since it seems they are the easier company to deal with as far as customer service goes.

And that Mishimoto Intake was a big turn off for me. Why put out such a crappy product which performs worse them OEM, smh!! That is worrisome and makes me question their engineering team.
I don’t know why anyone cares about a black intercooler on this car when it has a FMIC in OEM trim and red badges/trim everywhere. So gimmicky.
 

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Mishimoto FMIC was better compared to first gen PRL FMIC. Now that PRL came with a newer version of FMIC I think its better than mishimoto now.
hol'up what's this about a new PRL FMIC?
 


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I have tested and installed a lot of intakes, intercoolers, etc, that is on of my works , installing mods, some Dyno tuning this is what I can tell:
If you asking which intercooler performs better between Mishimoto and PRL the answer is Mishimoto.

I have tested and installed both. PRL is a good intercooler, direct fit, the installation process is very simple because you don't need to replace charge pipes, just the intercooler.
Performance of PLR: Street and track, I would not recommended this for track or street racing, drag racing , the temperatures were climbing like crazy, on track we saw temperatures over 140F and street racing the temps were climbing from 110 to120~130 F , the ambient temps were around 88 to 91 degrees. I live in Florida and the weather is always hot around 86F when is cold and 90 to 100F normally . This intercooler is good for daily driving the car and eventually a spirit driving.

Mishimoto: The installation is a lot more complex for someone not familiar with mechanical work, this came with the charge pipes and takes time and certain precautions when you tight the clamps , the hoses and pipes must be perfectly aligned otherwise you can have boost leaks, or not performs like expected.
The performance : Is amazing how this intercooler does performs, after hot track days we have seen temperatures of 94F to 98F degrees with 90F to 92F degrees ambient temps, and street racing we have been data logged temps starting from 110F and lowering after boost to 96F and climbing up to 105F with 92F degrees ambient temps.
I have data log proving this facts , and is not just my personal experience, we have a group of cars doing hard testing, all moved from PRL to Mishimoto .
I want to clarify the street racing we push the car very hard from 2 gear to 5th gear at WOT no lift shifting up to rev limiter.

At the moment I haven't seen any data proving the same conditions with other intercooler, and also you can see the ECT were in check, the data attached belongs to a full bolts on R with aftermarket turbo and HPFP pushing over 430WHP on 93 octane no meth with 25 to 26PSI boost a 7000 rpm . So no car detuned for track and this is a bar and plate intercooler.

Hopefully this info regarding the intercooler answer some questions.

Intakes:
Unfortunately the Mishimoto intake does not performs well from factory, I had to heat wrap it and after the mod, were performed great, just 3 to8 degrees over ambient temps.

PRL high volume intake:
In my opinion is one of the best intake who performs very well just the way it is , but it has issues like many aftermarket parts.
One of the issues it will eventually heat soak after slow speed driving and stop and go traffic, how you can fix this? easy just heat wrapping the box and the maf sensor tube, so no big deal, the other issue I have seen is peaks and spikes on the maf curve voltage and this last one is not good at all, because make a mess with all the calibration, I have to adjust the s trims curve for fix this issue on the tune. This last issue I have seen it in a couple Rs.

Honda Civic 10th gen PRL VS. MISHIMOTO INTERCOOLER logs.JPG


Honda Civic 10th gen PRL VS. MISHIMOTO INTERCOOLER Speed.JPG
 

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Something's fucky with that. The only time I've ever seen an IAT above 140 is from sitting for a long time. I haven't gone to a track but at the tail of the dragon on my hardest runs IAT was just around 10 more than IAT2. Though there you don't get long boost opportunities.

I gotta check the log but the one time I went from a cruising speed up to 170mph where you use all of 5th gear and pretty much most of 6th IAT s were still within 20 degrees of the temp coming in the MAF.
 

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Something's fucky with that. The only time I've ever seen an IAT above 140 is from sitting for a long time. I haven't gone to a track but at the tail of the dragon on my hardest runs IAT was just around 10 more than IAT2. Though there you don't get long boost opportunities.

I gotta check the log but the one time I went from a cruising speed up to 170mph where you use all of 5th gear and pretty much most of 6th IAT s were still within 20 degrees of the temp coming in the MAF.
It all depends how you drive the car and the ambient temps.
Is like people driving the car on the track with minimal mods and don’t overheat at all . I just posted the experience of a couple Rs racing mostly in the same conditions and pushing the car basically the same way .
 

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IATs are not the end all be all. Yes IATs are important but more importantly are pressure and flow when going for more power
 

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IATs are not the end all be all. Yes IATs are important but more importantly are pressure and flow when going for more power

Well that depends, if you having more boost pressure but the air charge is going to be hotter it could be worse because you need to run lower ignition timing for avoid pre ignition and when you do that the motor run more '' sloppy'' and doesn't have that ''crispy '' response, for other side hot air to the intake introduce higher temperatures to the combustion chamber is this is not good for long term run, specially for track, I'm always talking about the setup we are discussing here. The other problem is this ECU is very sensitive to higher IAT temps, course you can modify the IAT turbo tables, but these tables are configurated like that for make the motor run more reliable . The tables are configurated for reduce the turbo boost (IAT2 at intake ) when you have more than 75F degrees and (IAT after intercooler) reducing the ignition timing.
Resuming I would chose and intercooler capable to keep it up with temps, at the moment small cores just can't make this possible when you have more boost than stock and you are making power in hot weather. I'm referring when you really pushing the car.
 


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Well that depends, if you having more boost pressure but the air charge is going to be hotter it could be worse because you need to run lower ignition timing for avoid pre ignition and when you do that the motor run more '' sloppy'' and doesn't have that ''crispy '' response, for other side hot air to the intake introduce higher temperatures to the combustion chamber is this is not good for long term run, specially for track, I'm always talking about the setup we are discussing here. The other problem is this ECU is very sensitive to higher IAT temps, course you can modify the IAT turbo tables, but these tables are configurated like that for make the motor run more reliable . The tables are configurated for reduce the turbo boost (IAT2 at intake ) when you have more than 75F degrees and (IAT after intercooler) reducing the ignition timing.
Resuming I would chose and intercooler capable to keep it up with temps, at the moment small cores just can't make this possible when you have more boost than stock and you are making power in hot weather. I'm referring when you really pushing the car.
It’s all give and take. Sure your mishimoto might perform better with cooler IATs but look at what you’re giving up for that gain.
 

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It’s all give and take. Sure your mishimoto might perform better with cooler IATs but look at what you’re giving up for that gain.

Yes absolutely, you never going to get all you want .The only complains I must say the weight its bother me , but overall no complains, my ECT in track were around 220 ~237F depending the day .
 

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In my opinion, IATs are just as important as flow and pressure. The end all be all on this platform is air charge, which is a calculation of temperature, pressure, flow, and engine RPM. I wrote an article describing the relationship on the wiki.

Low IATs are absolutely essential to making power on this platform. Not only does the ECU actively pull back maximum boost via the compensation tables, it also just physically ends up requiring more boost to make the same air charge, thus you get out of your turbo's inefficiency range even sooner - something we already do quickly.

I've personally seen losses well over 50 lbft of torque on the dyno from just heatsoak.

The flow problem is mostly resolved by just getting a downpipe. Pressure isn't an issue, our turbo is capable of making a ton. The issue remaining for making optimal air charge is thus air temperatures.
 

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It seems like this thread should be renamed to "PRL vs Mishimoto"

I've seen IATs around 150F with PRL intercooler and HVI. However, it returns to normal in a couple minutes of driving (not hard).
I wish we could log ambient temperature with the FlashPro because we could actually calculate performance from datalogs and have better than anecdotal discussion. However, IIRC, the ambient was 95-98 when I took this datalog. Both IATs started out at ~150F but after a few minutes of driving the IAT2 gets down to 5 degrees above ambient and the intercooler 20-25 degrees above ambient.
Honda Civic 10th gen PRL VS. MISHIMOTO INTERCOOLER prl_heat_soak

I didn't really drive hard but I did some small pulls to get around people and you can see it IAT2 and IAT meet in temperature. There's even a couple places where IAT is 12.6 degrees below IAT2.
However, as I mentioned this is light driving...
Some thermal images for fun.
Honda Civic 10th gen PRL VS. MISHIMOTO INTERCOOLER prl_intercooler

Honda Civic 10th gen PRL VS. MISHIMOTO INTERCOOLER prl_hvi-upclose

Honda Civic 10th gen PRL VS. MISHIMOTO INTERCOOLER prl_hvi-perspective
 

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In my opinion, IATs are just as important as flow and pressure. The end all be all on this platform is air charge, which is a calculation of temperature, pressure, flow, and engine RPM. I wrote an article describing the relationship on the wiki.

Low IATs are absolutely essential to making power on this platform. Not only does the ECU actively pull back maximum boost via the compensation tables, it also just physically ends up requiring more boost to make the same air charge, thus you get out of your turbo's inefficiency range even sooner - something we already do quickly.

I've personally seen losses well over 50 lbft of torque on the dyno from just heatsoak.

The flow problem is mostly resolved by just getting a downpipe. Pressure isn't an issue, our turbo is capable of making a ton. The issue remaining for making optimal air charge is thus air temperatures.
Lust is referring to drop pressure due large cores, the turbo hast blow longer for get the same amount of PSI, filling large cores, also could introduce some lag. The ECU will target to certain amount of PSI regardless the intercooler size, but the turbo will need to work ''longer '' for reach the boost request.
Yes the heat soak is very bad.. I've seen more power and tq drop measures on the dyno and very noticeable on the track and street.
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