EQT Best IC – Part 2

Background:

Two days ago I made a post discussing a claim that Equilibrium tuning made about what the best intercooler is for the Mk7. The definitive tone of the wording was what caught my attention.

Revised Statement:

EQT made a revision to the statement, which now reads:

EQT Best IC Revised
EQT Best IC Revised

Assessment:

The revised statement is appropriate for the information that EQT is likely to have.

I’m glad to see that EQT was willing to make the correction to provide consumers with better information.

I’ve contacted several vendors about dubious claims in their advertising and it is the exception when a vendor makes a change. Ironically, ECS Tuning, which gets a bad rap, is a company that also did change its product description when I brought up a concern to them.

claims investigation

EQT is in the business of convincing consumers to purchase their products, so looking at their updates for facts is prudent.

In the new comments, beginning with “Edited”, EQT references “In our experience” and “based on our experience“. These are vague statements that reflect personal perceptions rather than quantitative measures.

Coincidentally, within the last week, I was looking over an operational testing slide deck and these phrases showed up in a collection of phrases, along with a humorous translation of what they really indicate about the speaker of the phrase.

Bottom line, “In our experience” is prudent to dismiss absent evidence.

An additional post was made with some more information:

EQT Best IC Revised
EQT Best IC Revised

This turns out to be a case of “should have stopped talking while you were ahead”.

Once again “In our experience” shows up. – As already discussed, this should be dismissed.

tuning almost every combination of hardware out there“. – Anybody else a fan of statistics thinks this claim isn’t remotely true? I’m aware of there being at least 37 different intercooler brands and over 120 different turbochargers. That makes for 4,440 different combinations. EQT wants me to believe they documented nearly that many tuning sessions to correlate the performance of the intercoolers? If we add in the 40 intake options it’s now up to 177,600 different combinations they have tuned. Different fueling setups? Yeah, we can see where this is going.

the Do88 intercooler is one of the top performers we come across” Then another enthusiast asks “How does this compare to the IE cooler?

EQT’s reply – “Without back-to-back test data on the same vehicle under the same conditions, it’s hard to make an accurate comparison against the Do88” Right on!

The irony here is that IE and do88 are two very popular intercoolers for the Mk7, and EQT has not performed an adequate evaluation to state how they compare. Yet they will state that do88 is one of the best cooling, top-performing intercoolers they have come across during their tuning of almost every combination of hardware out there.

Conclusion:

I appreciate that EQT returned to this discussion and changed a misleading statement.

They should have quit while they were ahead. In giving more information they made themselves less credible.

The key takeaway is that they have not presented any data to substantiate their claims. Their position relies upon “our experience is” which asks the consumer to put blind faith in a company that is financially motivated to convince that consumer to purchase their products.

7 thoughts on “EQT Best IC – Part 2”

  1. As always, thanks for your efforts to provide honest and verifiable product testing and results – and fact checking even the big guys in the MQB game.

  2. Robert Walton

    So, In your experience, what would be the best intercooler for road course work??

    1. I don’t have any experience, or data from anybody else, under those conditions to base a recommendation on.

  3. Great info and research you’ve done. But to put bad on EQT from speaking on their experiences seems a bit nit picky. What do you expect ? They are sharing their knowledge from working and using the products. Would you rather them say “in our research ,we found” ?

    1. I expect a business in the U.S. to market the products they sell following the guidelines set by the Federal Trade Commission.

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