IC's...Air/Air or Air/Water? [Merged 7-7] intercooler liquid

[MNGSX]

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It amost looks like you can fit that IC (maybe a slightly smaller one) vertically to the left of the head if the tanks were configured for it.

That 90 rotated outward facing compressor inlet looks funky but I'm sure it means buisness.

I'd like to see how that is all setup around the radiator and other clearance areas. That is intersting enough on it's own,

 

[QuickerDSM]

WoW, here is a post from the past.....

MNGSX,
I think Glazar <sp?> is running a air/water in that same location as you mentioned... Course that is a full-on drag car.

Mike

 

[MNGSX]

Spearco 230 or 231?

 

[king_john]

Hey, all; my first post. I know, it may be a dead topic, but I would be remiss to leave out my two cents. My father and I bought a '91 Syclone back in '91, and that was my first experience with a liquid/air intercooler setup on a non dedicated drag vehicle. The factory system was small; just adaquate, if you will. At the drag strip, of course it performed like a star. On the street, it did very well; and this is Florida I'm talking about, so that means something. It could do much better to avoid heat soaking if it had a slightly more efficient core, and slightly larger capacity for cooling medium. My 2001 Frontier is sporting a Spearco 2-231 liquid to air intercooler core, and it is more than adaquate for cooling my 2.4 liters of four cylinder. I run a small racing fuel cell mounted in my truck box, along with a 20 gpm 6-8 psi pump, and cool the water through a very nice radiator I plled out of a Camaro at the breaker yard. To keep the system as isolated as possible, I mounted the radiator at about a 30 degree angle in the area the spare tire once occupied, under the rear of the bed. Dual electric fans, also higher quality junk yard survivors, ensure that I am cooling the water even at a stop. There is a nice hand fabbed alum. shroud to pull air while moving, and beyond that, it is very straight forward. This system cost me little more than a brand new FMIC, but does a much better job, in my opinion. I know, there is little chance of doing this exact thing on a lower passenger car, where there is also less room under body. You might surprise yourself, though, to find some real possibilites. There is little arguement that the pressure drop offered by the liquid to air is far less than the typical air to air unit, and heat soaking of FMIC's during stop and go driving is pretty horendous, as well. I do want to try and mount an FMIC on my truck, though, and note the differences. I think the only way to compare apples and oranges is by getting them to grow on the same tree...
John

 

[ahains]

A couple of notes..

(1)I hope it is ok to link to another board, because I think it is very relevant to this discussion. This one cool guy on the mr2 board created an a/w IC from parts at Ace hardware for around $40:
http://board.mr2faq.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=142808
We are still waiting on a full write-up, but he typed up the parts list so I have started trying to dream up my own implementation.

He did some temperature logged runs at 15psi on a fairly large turbo and found the IC to have a very high efficiency.

My data logging of before and after IC show a static 98 deg F outlet temp. Pretty impressive for something that costs $40 in materials.

If nothing else, I like this because it shows that you can succeed at this kind of a project using ghetto fabrication skills

(2)The folks from the DIY A/W IC Yahoo group have had good success with a bait aerator pump from Wal-Mart:
From http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/Air-Water-Intercoolers/message/1 :

The pump is a 12V. DC pump that can be bought at Wal-Mart. It is a bait aerator pump that it rated for continuous duty. It comes with a
three year warranty and is relatively quiet. It costs around $20 -
$25. Its flow rate seems to be adequate, although I have yet to
experiment with varying this.

(3)Those same DIY A/W IC yahoo group guys have had good success using a tranny cooler for the heat exchanger.

I would eventually like to make a PVC & aluminum tubing based system, with the aerator pump, and a tranny cooler.
So many ghetto projects and so little time!!

HTH,
Adrian

 

[LucidEclipse]

I was looking around ebay and found this PWR air/water intercooler. Due to its compact size (12" or so long) i was wondering if anyone is using these to shorten the piping and get rid of most pressure drop. I was thinking running a pipe straight from the turbo to the intake manifold, and just inserting the A/W intercooler in between. the only question i have is how do you keep the water in the pump/reservoir cool? eventually the water in the pump would heat up pretty good causing the efficiency to drop wouldn't it? I have a C02 system in my car that i could use to spray the reservoir/pump. I am running a t28 and it doesnt flow 500 cfm, the biggest turbo i would probably use on my car (2g daily driver) would be a regular 16g and i know it flows close to 500 cfm. Let me know the pro's and cons if you have experience with these setups. Heres a link incase you dont know what it looks like http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=33741&item=2424835033
Thanks.

 

[13secGST]

uhh well to make the system work properly what you will have to do is get another radiator and mount it in front...like where you would put a front mount IC...but this radiator doesn't have to be too big. Then you need to install some sort of pump to pump the water through the system and a fan for when you aren't moving. Then you can get the CO2 sprayer and spray both your radiators to cool down your engine temps and IC temps. And you could also add ice to the reservior for when you plan on racing.

 

[Defiant]

Originally posted by LucidEclipse
the only question i have is how do you keep the water in the pump/reservoir cool?

Ah, there you've stumbled onto it, haven't you? For road use, you need to devise a circulation system and radiator for the cooling water. For drag racing, it's common to have an ice (or even dry-ice) resevoir that'll feed it for a couple of passes.
You could mount a heater core in the sidemount location, rig a water circulator and do it that way. It's not impossible at all. But it's not uncomplicated, either. And probably not very cheap.

 

[fastalon]

i have an air to water and it is great for daily drivin.

 

[turbohappy]

Would it be possible to get a more serious radiator (Fluidyne probably) and just pipe it into the main cooling system? Or does the main cooling system run too hot?

 

[ChicagoGSX]

Originally posted by turbohappy
Would it be possible to get a more serious radiator (Fluidyne probably) and just pipe it into the main cooling system? Or does the main cooling system run too hot?

Cooling system is at ~200 degrees when warmed up so it wouldn't work very well.

 

[Enigma_Man]

Originally posted by turbohappy
Would it be possible to get a more serious radiator (Fluidyne probably) and just pipe it into the main cooling system? Or does the main cooling system run too hot?

Yeah, you wouldn't really want to do that, because the engine water can be fairly hot, and you'd be putting heat back into the intake charge sometimes, and not cooling very effectively other times.

The convenient thing about air/water intercooling is it's much easier to route small water pipes than large IC pipes. You do gain a little weight from the added components. You'd need the air/water IC, a reservoir of sorts, a pump, and a radiator for the system too.

When I get money to really start modding my car, I'm probably going to go with air/water, if anything just to be a testbed to see what it can really do.

-Jesse

 

[turbohappy]

That's what I assumed, but I figured I'd ask I'm seriously thinking about air/water just to remove some of the clutter! What's an estimate for total cost?

 

[LucidEclipse]

the actual intercoolers look like their going for ~350-450, the pump would be another 150 or so, then throw in the reservoir and cooling radiator, fan, pipes, f it im just gonna get a front mount and go with my original idea of spraying the front mount if it gets hot. Thanks for the explanations.

 

[myblack98gst]

Well I rad most of the way throught this and got bored and decided to speak my peace..


there is a guy around my town with a 3rd gen RX-7 with a single turbo (T88) swap and he runs a air/liquid. he was sold on the idea before he got it but after using it for a little bit on the road he urged me to not do one on mine for these reasons..

1) you have to have 5+ gallons of reserve water on board to make it last.

2) you need to keep ice in it to keep the air/liquid efficiancy

3) after awhile of driving the water will become heat soaked and be warmer than the outside air.


I still will agree that this would be a great thing if you are running at the track alot because the benifits would be great. but for a everyday driver you really wouldn't see too much improvement.. I mean who really wants to stop at the gas station every morning to pick up some coffee and a bag of ice!!

if you want to go with extreme cooling for track use go with a Cryo2 sprayer or a NX intercooler sprayer

 

[Defiant]

Originally posted by myblack98gst
there is a guy around my town with a 3rd gen RX-7 with a single turbo (T88) swap and he runs a air/liquid. he urged me to not do one on mine for these reasons..

1) you have to have 5+ gallons of reserve water on board to make it last.

2) you need to keep ice in it to keep the air/liquid efficiancy

3) after awhile of driving the water will become heat soaked and be warmer than the outside air.

But is he cooling that water through a heat exchanger, or just running a tank?

 

[myblack98gst]

even with a heat exchanger the water can only be cooled down to the temp. of the surrounding air and no more.. as far as I know he does not have anything on it.

Like I said I think before this would be a greta thing for a track day but not much improvement on a day of driving around town..

 

[MNGSX]

Directly cryo the water resivoir and eff the heat exchanger.

 

[QuickerDSM]

Originally posted by myblack98gst
even with a heat exchanger the water can only be cooled down to the temp. of the surrounding air and no more.. as far as I know he does not have anything on it.

That is why his water gets heat soaked then. To run an air/water on the street, you MUST have a heat exchanger of decent size.

I'm no expert on thermal efficiencies, but how is this (water @ ambient) worse off than a standard intercooler. I would think the water (even at ambient temps) would be able to extract heat much more efficiently than just ambient air over the fins of an intercooler.

Mike

 

[king_john]

Yes, water transfers heat 25 times faster than air. This is why, if you have a heat exchanger of appropriate size, you can achieve water temps equal to ambient air temps. The benefit to this is that the ambient temperature water is flowwing across the core, whereas the FMIC would not actually be passing air through the core at very low, or no speed. I have a radiator from a Camaro under the bed of my truck, both angled and shrouded to get the best possible airflow under speed. There are also a set of electric fans pulled out of the junk yard to move air when the vehicle is stopped. That, in conjunction with a healthy volume of water that sits in the reservoir before passing through the dedicated radiator, means that I can maintain very low water temps for the core. Cars with less space available, both under them and in them, might be at a disadvantage, making them better proponents for the air to air units. Dedicated race cars, though, can get very creative about cooling boxes, reservoirs, and heat exchangers. The stock system on the Syclone, though, suffers from heat soaking during long trips, or the summer monthes.
John

 

[Tallen]

at the thermodynamics defying products. JUNK. Haha.

Ram air on a turbo car? Ram air doesnt even work on a n/a car.
Great stuff. I cant believe an "extreme tuner" has this on his car....the weight alone will kill the HP gains.

Water to air works, yea, but it has to be in close contact with air to work.

 

[king_john]

Originally posted by Tallen
at the thermodynamics defying products. JUNK. Haha.

Ram air on a turbo car? Ram air doesnt even work on a n/a car.
Great stuff. I cant believe an "extreme tuner" has this on his car....the weight alone will kill the HP gains.

Water to air works, yea, but it has to be in close contact with air to work.

I don't mean to offend; but, what part of this made any sense? If you mean to say that facing the turbo into positive airstream is a crock of shizzit, why do all real high hp turbo cars do it? Hell, Turbonetics' drag celica has what looks like a pair of dinner plates sitting way up in the airstream! "Ram air" as you put it may be gimmicky, but shoving a face full of air into the turbo inlet is all but force feeding the turbo at higher speeds. And if you mean to say that the added weight of a liquid to air system is death to the power it ads, why would most professional racers do it? FACT is that air/air intercoolers will NEVER reduce charge temps below ambient air temp, nor will they remove hardly any heat while not moving. Liquid to air, though, can and does do both, on the track.
John

 

[ELITEeclipseGST]

i was planning on a CO2 sprayer it would use a paintball tank and some steel lines and a jet head this would take up less room and would accomplish lower temperatures. just a thought let me know if this is possible. Eliteeclipsegst

 

[greyforestgst]

my brother's street driven turbo 13b 1979 rx7 uses a water/air, and works beautifully.
co2 i/c sprayers are already being made by switch, i believe. www.intercoolertechniques.com

 

[ItsStockOfficer]

Air to air cores are colled while not moving by the ambient air thats flowing through them into the engine.