True - but a brief overboost spike on an FWD car just makes you loose traction most of the time, and you are pushing the turbo past it's efficiency - making it very likely to fail.

Is that a regular temp sensor like the water temp sensor?

Tim

Cannot seem to find a specific gauge that measure charge temps. Probably a waste of time unless it's hooked up to a laptop and logged in conjunction with time and RPM

no,you will need a charge air temp gauge with a sensor capableof reading temp in the boost pipes without being thrown off by the flow.
i have this one fitted in mine (rarely sees over 35 degrees c but then i run twin intercoolers!)
http://www.methanol-injection.co.uk/images/tn4_2164447.jpg
but there are also other gauges
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Air-Charge-Temp-Ga...#ht_2640wt_1139

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PLX-DM5-Air-Intake...#ht_4126wt_1241

Legend Cheers GS

Do you have any pictures of your I/C setup ?

no,but its fairly easy to describe,front mount alloy intercooler behind the bumper then another intercooler running vertically (from front view,its about 30 degrees from vertical from the side as its leaning toward the rear of the car to get the pipe work to the throttlebody) in front of the wheel arch on the passenger side,same kind of routing as a normal front mount i think,but i saw enough space to fit a second cooler,and went for it,that 35 degree reading was on a hot day,1.5 bar,WOT through 3rd,4th and into 5th gear.very effective.

Were you not concered about / have you measured pressure loss through them ?

Obviously it cools the charge very well, but I was just curious.

pressure loss is much less important to me than cooling,i did have a quick check,plumbing my boost gauge to either side and saw no problems,the car runs faster with no noticeable change in lag

[quote=MattW
I'm using a simple ball and spring PRV, no placebo effect here, I measured it on the boost gauge.
[/quote]

I had the same issue with boost peaking and dropping off very quickly with the original (faulty) controller and a PRV; swapped it for a Gizzmo electronic controller and now it holds the boost much much longer. On the rollers at Weston Performance it took it from 219BHP (with Gtec1, so not good) up to 250.

GS - Your setup is quite interesting makes me think is there a benefit to having 2 smaller intercoolers instead of 1 big one? Do you per chance have a RR?

no,there is one within 5 minutes drive of my house though.my tuning philosophy is usually one of,if i have stuff lying around ill try to use that instead of buying more stuff and wasting money,so i used what i had,tested it,it worked,so it aint broke lol.
i have the same setup as this car,and if it works for them itll work for me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPLbMWxjo7Y

900bhp mk4 golf,at 4.33 you can see the 2 intercoolers as per mine in exactly the same configuration