I did spend a load of time on this and designed a lovely end tank for my ST185 that would fit perfectly with intended pipework locations (where they would fit without butchering). I then proceeded to get prices for it....
Most companies can't/will not make nice smooth flowing end tank designs as a custom job as they just don't have the skill to fabricate. Bob Hall that Don used will as will Docking engineering. Pace/Forge/Radtec/Allard etc will not touch it and will only make them formed from sections of flat ally.
The price of the docking engineering was far too high to consider for a road car (IIRC it was £1500-£2000 ish). Antipodean Bob was not known about when I did mine but he is more reasonable but still expensive.
As such I redesigned a best fit flat ally end tank that was based around a Forge standard core and the custom design cost no more than a regular IC. (Around £400 from memory). The forge end tanks look very similar to the Buscher IC
IMHO for a core I would be looking at a tube & fin as opposed to a bar & plate. Much lighter and dependant on the fin density can provide better cooling for a given cross section without much undue pressure drop. The airflow is also blocked more by a bar & plate so airflow to the rad will be reduced.
End tank design. It just must be smooth and allow slow air expansion/redirection to the whole core. Otherwise you may as well just use a smaller core.
At peak power (assuming around 400bhp) the air in the pipe hitting the core will be travelling around 200mph - it really doesn't want to change direction and the majority of the ebay type cores will only use a small section of the core due to poor end tank design, the rest of the core will just act as a thermal mass.
Dan did some CFD modelling of end tanks (but I don't think modelled any turbulators and found that most of the core will be redundant without good end tank design. It would therefore having a higher pressure drop reducing BHP and the air will spend less time in contact with the turbulators due to velocity so will cool less.
A couple of simple things you can do to help is to expand the entry/exit pipe prior to IC connection and enlarge the IC connection sizes. Have the connections central to the IC core. Consider using internal air deflection plates within the end tank to try and equalise the flow across the core face.
The products you have shown have a mixture of cast end tanks and fabricated from flat plate. The cast will make it easier (and cheaper for bulk manufacture) to provide a smooth entry/exit but will add a fair bit of weight, the flat plate end tanks will be what 99% of custom ICs will be provided with.
The standard Skyline core is quite a nice design and was just a bit too big to fit a ST185 but the ST205 allows a wider intercooler to be used due to pipework run locations so may be worth considering.
Personally I think the Evo core looks badly suited when fitted to a GT4 as the pipes have to bend much more than required with a good design.
As a guide it is also worth measuring the cross section of the standard water to air intercooler and looking inside at the core make up. Most of it is air way as the cross flow water ways are very narrow when compared to a air-to-air heat exchanger. Additionally the cross section is much larger than most air-to-air coolers.
The more I looked into it the more I thought that most aftermarket intercoolers are possibly worse for flow than the standrad water to air on the ST205. (they will cool better long term though).
I had an easy job as upgrading a ST185 intercooler is not difficult!
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) I thought I would do a bit of research before hand.
