water to air intercooler

[CHIQLES]

So far yes its early but ive had a total of 4 intercoolers ,stock ,audi 5000 smic,saab fmic, and now water. They where all good for there own reasons but im happy with the water.Also today driveing around the air temp was around 72 but my throttle temp was 86 and would drop once i got moveing around. I also parked the car for a while. Obviously the system heat soaked but never got above 96 and once i turned the pump on temps started dropping even while parked.I think next relocate the tank to the trunk that will help drop water temps as well. well made a small vid.

 

[CHIQLES]

final note the car rpms dont dip hard where the car wants to die. pipes are so short that the car catches itself no problem so the fact the maf had to go back on the intake made no differnce.

 

[CHIQLES]

here are some more pics that I took of when I installed the heat exchanger. Helpful tip when you need to hold onto a nut in hard to reach spot electrical tape works great..

this is where the tape came handy

 

[CHIQLES]

Well today I'm swapping out the coolent in system was running just distiled water with prestone no water weter didn't get a chance to try. I'm going with engine ice wich is a coolent for motor cycles and atv's they claim to be able to run 50 deg cooler but what attracted me more is the fact that they are safe for the enviroment. Well i ll let you guys know how it turns out.

 

[dmention7]

Honestly, if it never gets below freezing in your area, I'd just run distilled water with some water wetter. My $0.02

 

[CHIQLES]

Ya I understand but its also an experiment for my work trying to see if there are any eco chemicals that I can use to heat but dispate heat heat just as fast.

 

[CHIQLES]

Well this stuff is somewhat good the way I see it working it takes a while to heat but it also takes a while to cool..so I can see its effectiveness..

 

[CHIQLES]

Well cars running like a champ so far, just goto wrap that hot pipe that thing is radiating is some good heat..

 

[dmention7]

Hot pipe as in the turbo hot pipe? Don't wrap that or else you'll be keeping heat in. The whole point of an intercooler is to remove heat

 

[CHIQLES]

Didn't wrap just painted black with engine enamel 500 prob the same deal though. How's your system doing..

 

[CHIQLES]

well cleaned things up some more. Ive been haveing fun with this system but ill be honest seems like more of a headache sometimes but you know that maybe the nature of the beast. My on switch has an issue of not turning on sometimes witch makes me want to hard wire it into something else but not sure what. I Have crazy throttle responce witch is fun but i have no tunning so then the car bogs down faster due to the rich mapping from mazda. That is what is driveing me the craziest is the lack of abality to tune I have boost guage, aem afr guage, then my phone shows me timeing graph, maf graph , water and air temps but nothing to tune with..I just want to take some fuel away..I know I should save forsomething but the next thing is a knock light..at that point i may start raising boost..

 

[dmention7]

My kit is doing nothing until I get my motor back together and into my car. lol But I'll probably be pushing 12-14psi through the stock turbo, so it will be interesting to see if my little core can keep up with the hot boost air, or if I need to get a larger core.

 

[CHIQLES]

heres some pics so will i pass smog lol

this is stock and thats my story.

 

[CHIQLES]

i filled the tank full of fluid and changed the pump over to the same one you got pushing way more fluid through the system took a test run boosted for a good 4 to 5 seconds with no real change in temp a good 77 degrees later dropped to 69 by the time i was done but that took a while since im cooling way more volume though.

 

[jdwk]

I didn't read this whole thread so feel free to tell me I'm an idiot, but air to water intercoolers are used because of packaging reasons not for actual usefulness.

All it takes is this very simple cognitive exercise. How hot does the outside temp get? How hot does your coolant get?

One is about 100 degrees more than the other. Should we investigate this any further?

 

[dmention7]

I'm not sure I get your point completely. There are benefits beyond packaging concerns.

In an air-air system, you need a much larger heat transfer surface (and corresponding core size and internal volume) because of the comparatively lower heat capacity of air. There are also only 1 or 2 practical locations to place the exchanger to get the required airflow across the core, leading to longer piping. An air-water core can be much smaller, and thus be located almost anywhere, so the volume of your intake tract becomes much smaller, improving responsiveness.

And I think you're misunderstanding the term "coolant". This system does NOT share the coolant that's circulating through your motor... it's a separate closed system. In a system with a properly sized heat exchanger, your coolant temps should never be more than a few degrees above ambient.

The advantages over an air-air system are debatable when weighed against the complexity, but they are still there.

 

[CHIQLES]

http://www.gnttype.org/techarea/turbo/intercooler.html
This is also a good read, dmention is right though cooling is based on the amount of surface area you have for cooling on the air to air the air to water has more veriables. But in the end they both will get hot if there is no air passing through either through the heat exhanger or the intercooler..

 

[jdwk]

I'm not sure I get your point completely. There are benefits beyond packaging concerns.

In an air-air system, you need a much larger heat transfer surface (and corresponding core size and internal volume) because of the comparatively lower heat capacity of air. There are also only 1 or 2 practical locations to place the exchanger to get the required airflow across the core, leading to longer piping. An air-water core can be much smaller, and thus be located almost anywhere, so the volume of your intake tract becomes much smaller, improving responsiveness.

And I think you're misunderstanding the term "coolant". This system does NOT share the coolant that's circulating through your motor... it's a separate closed system. In a system with a properly sized heat exchanger, your coolant temps should never be more than a few degrees above ambient.

The advantages over an air-air system are debatable when weighed against the complexity, but they are still there.

I think you answered your question (or statement) quite well, but in real world applications it is not merely a few degrees above ambient. While water's latent heat is much higher than air's it also means it can't get rid of that heat as well. It doesn't take long for underhood temperatures to reach 200+ degrees regardless of where your IC is located, which in the case of air to water IC's is usually very close to the engine block and the reason the designers went with it in the first place.

Look up heat soak and IAT issues on the GT500 and Corvette ZR1, two cars I am aware use an air to water IC from the factory. They will lose 6-8mph in the 1/4 hot lapping. I've witnessed it first hand.

There is an obvious reason they use an ait to water, for a turbocharged car like the MSP, it just doesn't make any sense.

 

[dmention7]

I guess I'm still not 100% sure what you're getting at. Any intercooler system will heatsoak to some degree. The amount of heat absorbed by an air-water core in an engine bay is negligible compared to the amount of heat that a properly sized heat exchanger can dissipate. There's just not a significant surface for heat transfer compared to the heat transfer area inside the core or in the exchanger. Heck, an air-air system probably has more surface area in the charge piping alone.

Please explain why it "doesn't make any sense"?

 

[CHIQLES]

I'm confused reading your statement jdwk. It is pratical both setups can be pratical. My intercooler is next to the block but after driveing 20 miles intraffic its always cold to the touch. I can actualy stick a stickythermometer and data log temperatures if you like. I have the thermometer in the trunk I picked it up in clearence at harbor freight 5 bucks. True the engine bay gets hot but here in my town I haven't been over 80 deg all year what the hells goin on with this weather. Another thing that you guys can't see in my picks is that all the holes in my engine bay are pretty much coverd forceing the air to go through my radiator and also I removed the rubber weather stripping at the back of the hood to help the heat excape. There are a lot of things to consider when working with heat and trying to removeit and I try to hit all my bases.