The first time I tested the AMD intercoolers I used the flowbench adapter that I’ve used for all of the intercoolers that have a 2″ outlet pipe.  This is a 2-1/8″ ID rubber hose connector which fits over a 2-1/8″ plastic sleeve on the adapter plate.

It was a stretch, literally, to get the hose over the end of the AMD outlet pipe, but it fit on.  When I received the Apikol intercoolers I could not get the hose over the outlet pipe, perhaps the metal thickness was slightly greater, so I was forced to come up with a new means of attaching the intercooler to the flowbench.  Since I was going through the effort, I made sure the adapter diameter was large enough to fit over the 2.25″ outlet pipe so the two would fit together more easily.

I recently acquired my own set of AMD intercoolers and I wanted to test them with the properly sized adapter.

Not too surprisingly there was a minor bump in airflow with the correct adapter size.  A more surprising result was what occurred when I attached the inlet hose adapter, the airflow increased by approximately 16 CFM on the passenger side and 8 CFM on the driver side.  My theory for why is that the short inlet pipe results in highly turbulent air being pulled into the endtank whereas the addition of the inlet hose adapter allows more distance for the airflow direction of travel to stabilize.  The smaller improvement on the driver side supports this idea since there is a longer inlet hard pipe on that side.  Another possible contributor is that the end of the silicone hose adapter presents a flat surface to the incoming air whereas the bare pipe is more of a sharp edge.

The Results

The updated CFM values are shown below.

Because I cannot count on having inlet hoses when I receive a set of intercoolers my default test configuration is without any hoses attached.

For anyone who is wondering how the Apikol intercoolers would have done with their inlet hoses attached, that test was performed, the owner provided the hoses in the box they sent.  The aiflow readings dropped slightly, but the Apikol inlet hoses also take the place of the hard piping that is found on the AMD intercooler, so in order to do a similar comparison I would need to test the passenger AMD intercooler with the hard pipe attached, which I don’t plan to do.  As it stands, the Apikol passenger side flowed 270 CFM with the inlet attached and the AMD is flowing 289 CFM with only the inlet hose but not the hard pipe.  Likely the AMD reading would come down some, though I doubt by more than 10 CFM.  Bottom line, the Apikol and AMD intercoolers flow very similar numbers with only a few CFM of difference between the two.