The Honda Civic Type R, it’s the unicorn that we heard of overseas but couldn’t grasp with our hands in the states until just over 2 years ago and boy it was worth the wait. With Honda posting a 7:43.8 lap time that means it has beat out cars like an Audi R8 7:44, Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera 7:46 and the list goes on. But what didn’t Honda tell us about that record-setting lap? How many times did they have to pull over because of heat soak? Did they have have to blast the heater to keep the car cool during that lap or was it during a bleak winter? One thing is for certain from the factory the Type R hates the heat and in most cases can barely make it around a track a couple of times before going into limp mode!

Now, this isn’t our first rodeo with the Type R. We owned a 2017 Honda Civic Type-R when it first came out and loaded it up with the latest bolt on’s at the time. SSR wheels, custom E30 tune from Erik @ DramaTune, USR down-pipe, Mishimoto intake and after all that we made 305whp and 365tq! What was missing was an intercooler back then we were focused on go-fast parts but didn’t realize how hot the car got. We saw intake temps coming in at 162 degrees and only reducing to 150 degrees! It was clear then we needed an intercooler back then. That 2017 has since been sold and we have 2019 in our hands now and we were not going to make the same mistake! The first thing we purchased was a PRL intercooler straight from the Function Factory Performance! When doing initial data logging we were seeing on a hot Arizona day intake temps at 151 at idle and cooling down to 145 degrees with the stock intercooler. Under high acceleration, we would see intake temps start at 139 and drop down to 130 at best. So at best we were seeing an 8-9 degree difference with the stock intercooler. Let’s talk about the PRL intercooler!

Direct replacement of the OEM front mount intercooler.

Billet Aluminum and it’s oh so beautiful

85% larger surface area

No cutting or trimming needed

Install time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Let’s talk first impressions post-install the car felt the same on the low end, and under high acceleration, it seemed like it would continue to keep pulling and not drop off. Then we took a look at our data logs from an idle on a warm day we reached 135 inlet temps and it was cooling it down to 105 at idle!! That’s over 30 degrees difference vs our 8-9 degree with stock! Then we got to really driving it hard and it performed well there! The inlet temps were coming in around 115 and intake temps were hitting 95-96 degrees consistently which told us that this was clearly a great choice as the car was able to run cooler and something we should’ve done on the last car! Our next modification will be the addition of the PRL intake to increase the airflow and of course gain some extra woooosshhh sounds!

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