Just out towing this weekend and was paying particular attention to my intake temps. Conditions were 70°F and clear towing 24ft travel trailer and 3 rail motorcycle trainer with 2 bikes plus wife kids and stuff. Hill after hill the temp climbs up to 240° then 250°, and on the last big hill I saw 275°F on the intake temps, boost was set to 13psi. Water temp got to 210° before the fan clutch kicked in. EGT stayed below 900° and I have not installed the tranny temp sender unit yet. Man do I need an intercooler, I have all intentions to install one, just have not got to it yet.

WOW! Im surprised the engine didnt overheat with those IAT's. Are those intake temps typical for a non-intercooled 6.5?

yeah, actually...sadly it is, and most 6.5s like mine dont have intercoolers. it sucks bc thats a huge loss in power bc of those high iat's. i was just wondering Boisebiker, how did you measure your iat's??

Good report, BB - no matter how many times we post those IAT temp levels, people still try cranking up the power without installing gages, cooling, exhaust, etc - all the required safety items.

Those temps were on a 70deg day - imagine how quickly IAT rises on a 90-100deg day.

Charge-air cooling is a necessity for towing\hauling, required to maintain even oem factory power levels.

before IC with me, my IAT's were above 325 F with 22 psi out of my GM8, I never ran my Holset without the intercooler, that would have been intersting.

Yes BB,where do you put the prob for IAT measurement??

High IAT will kill the efficiency of the engine. Remember, the hotter the air is, the less dense it is. So when we install an intercooler (or charge air cooler aka CAC), we drop our intake temps a LOT. The result is a cool, dense intake charge which in turn will make more power and be far more efficient.

I thought about building an air/water aftercooler setup similar to that used on many other engines like the industrial application Cummins 5.9 or the older N14's. Just would be a total mess under the hood though, but it would probably work. I'll stick with an air/air intercooler. :ro)

Might have to play with some water injection one of these days...

I use an electronic temp guage and sender. I just drilled and tapped a hole in the top of the intake, right where EGR wound be on a S engine. I am planning on using additional senders, which I already have, to moniter tranny temp. I will install a switch so I can have more than one sender on a single guage, I sure love my guages.