I have a '06 5.9L mega cab with a 6SPD southbend dual disk clutch S&B CAI and 5" turbo back exhaust. I do have gauges and that it's. No airdog or FASS. I'm not looking for crazy power truck has 8" lift and 37's mostly looking for reliability and fuel milage. I was recommended to upgrade the intercooler and get a smarty SR. The banks inter cooler comes with mandrel-bent 3.5" high-flow boost tubes ... large, high-efficiency all-aluminum end tanks ... a wide-open inlet and outlet ... a 20% thicker core area with a 27% improvement in volume ... and a colossal super-flow Monster-Ram intake manifold.

Just trying to figure out if it's really worth the $1200 to upgrade.

 

Take the money you'll waste on a inter cooler (don't care whose brand) at this point, and get custom tuned EFI or Smarty and actually see a HUGE improvement.

 

Not worth it IMO.. like stated above put the money towards a Smarty or an injector upgrade..

 

I purchased the Banks Techni-Cooler with the Monster Ram intake and consider it a colossal waste of money for my vehicle. It may make a difference if you are building a Monster sled puller but for daily use it is definitely overkill.

The only plus I see is should you start pushing high boost pressures the plastic ends of the stock inter-cooler will not pop off or leak. I did manage to recoup some of my costs as a guy was looking for a stock inter-cooler and the '03 had all aluminum inter-coolers without the crimp on plastic inlet & outlet end caps so I received a good price for it.

The Smarty is a good choice but you may wish to consider the EFI Live since you have an '06 vehicle. I am running the Smarty S-06 POD programmer and have been happy with it having replaced a Quadzilla standard box. I might consider the EFI Live once they offer tuning for the '03-05 CTD.

Good luck,..............dogger

 

First, while I am not a Banks fan in general, the Techni-cooler is one thing they did right.

However, until you are pushing a whole lot of air-- and most turbos do not meet that definition-- you don't need the upgraded CAC and therefore would not see much, if any, benefit.

 

I agree with everyone. Also my 06 came with an all aluminum CAC.

 

Good info fellows. I was kind of thinking the same thing about the intercooler.