Well when payday rolls around I will be making some changes, this was more of a proof of concept thing than anything else. Every time I do a project i learn so much that I often wish i could start over, so i figured with this one i would invest a small amount and see what i learned and go from there. I learned that even though the hood/intercooler gasket is soft rubber its enough to pinch the line and will require some modding to work well. Second that the crap ass pump I bought is not enough for misters, however it would work just fine for squirters (this would bring more problems to solve however). Lastly in the vein of your question, I put a tiny bit of water in the bottom of the res, then half crushed ice and then STUFFED it with cubes, the idea being that the crushed ice would melt into ice cold water and the cubes would last and keep the water temp lower, longer. Me thinks that heat wrap of some kind is in order for the res, keep the engine heat off of it longer. Maybe some of those Hot/cold foil bags would be worth testing.
This would be cool, no pun intended. No reason you cant run both.
If you really want to run ice water, do what the race guys use for cool suits: use a small lunch size cooler.
Even a large thermos would work. Mount it in the trunk or better yet inside the cabin of the car behind a seat or something to maximize how long the temp of water stays cold.
On the other hand, keep in mind the goal of I/C waterspray. The goal isn't to try to use cold water to directly cool down the intercooler, the goal is to use water to cool down
the air that's flowing through the intercooler. In that regard, the most important part of the whole setup is ensuring the sprayers you're using are properly sized and the pump has enough pressure to atomize the water you're spraying.
If your sprayers are atomizing the water properly, there is so much surface area to the water that it evaporates almost immediately. It's the phase change of the water from liquid to gas that cools down the air, and the amount of heat extracted from the air is far more than the heat extracted from heating the water from 32F to ambient.
Bottom line is, unless you're attempting to pre-cool the I/C with tons of ice water so the I/C is as cold as possible (like right before a drag pull), the water temp is way less important than the quality of your sprayers/pump to ensure you've got an ultra-fine mist.
When I build my I/C sprayer, I used a 90psi water pump and some industrial sprayer atomization nozzles, plus a massive water tank in the trunk (6 gallons), all controlled with that I/C spray computer I posted about earlier. I had a 3 way switch that gave me off/auto/manual spray modes.
I just tossed a video from '03 up on YouTube of me playing with the sprayer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Ndk92iZW8
As you can kinda see, it dumps a crapload of water over the intercooler... way over-kill, especially since tech at autocross wouldn't let me run with the tank in the car since it was just strapped down w/ bungees and not bolted in. So, it was pretty much useless. On the other hand, one time the hoses popped loose under the hood, and my sprayer turned into a squirt gun out the hood scoop that shot about 30ft in front of the car, and that was useful at pedestrian crosswalks. :lol:
