You wont give up any power. As long as it is big enough, either design is fine. Bar plate gives less pressure drop but isnt as efficient. Tube-fin doesnt flow as much, but what it does flow gets cooled a lot better.

Bar plate is slightly sturdier but also lots more expensive, since most bar-plates are custom aftermarket jobs and most of the tube fin intercoolers are OEM ones that have been converted to project use. I'm using a tube-fin mk3 supra intercooler that has served me very well for years now.

That reminds me of another thing. Take things other car owners say with a grain of salt. An intercooler that "sucks" might have been fitted to a much larger engine or have very restrictive stock tubing around it. The MK3 intercooler is supposedly a turd, but it is a huge (for a miata) unit with nice end tanks (I relocated mine), perfectly sized for a T3/T04 sized turbo (2" inlet/outlet) and you can easily make much more direct pipes than the MK3 supra comes with stock (looks like spaghetti under the hood).

Also, beware of small bar-plate jobs that have crappy end-tanks and are sized for 180 whp D series honda turbos. Lol ebay.

This is back from when I painted it. Yeah, engine enamel > powdercoat.
http://i14.tinypic.com/4csg4es.jpg

It would be worth the time to go in with a plastic stylus and straighten the dented fins.

bar and plate are also nice because they're totally modular. you can make them any size you want just by stacking more layers. kinda like a scooby doo/shaggy sandwich

http://ghoul-school.freeonlinegames.com/images/1867.jpg

good analogy. Did you do good on your SATs?

good in math. but rather than study for the verbal, i watched cartoons.

ah, now I see how it all comes together.

I took that picture 3+ years ago. I regularly go back and straighten the fins and pick the bugs out.

What kind of air temp rise are you guys seeing from boost onset to redline/shift (list numbers)? and what intercooler? size?

I don't think tube/fin is the cheap intercooler anymore- not with the chinese making the bar/plate.

none - 2 and 3rd gear pull 78 rising to 80 at top of second, drops and holds to 78 through third.
this is consistent as well, all of my datalogs have shown no more than a 6-7 degree increase over several pulls.

C or F?

I typically see 10C (give or take) above ambient just driving around. It goes up another 10C or so in boost but drops back down quickly. I havent datalogged in a long long time. Typically in low 90s ambient I will be around 40C or so just puttering around. In boost I can get up to mid-high 40s C.

Basically the car is fast below 90F weather, sluggish above. Below 40F, the car is very fast but I have to redo the EBC settings to avoid overboosting.

F
Yeah, below 40 is a huge difference on a turbo car. Course its only been like that a few weeks all winter...