Project Thread Project SC400TT

[newkoba]

the intercooler in question on ryan's car will be light years ahead in its efficiency. when you talk of placing ice cubes in your resevoir you must have seen someone who thought of the bright idea of cooling an intercooler with engine coolant that heats up to 200 degrees at all times... think about that concept and then you can figure out why previous attempts at water to air have failed. in this case the intercooler has a seperate heat exchanger that will mount where the ac condensor and radiator are. this serves as the cooling device for the liquid in the system. the liquid is then pumped through the system including the cooler. while air travesl through the fins in the cooler the water absorbs the heat and then carries it completely away from the cooler and then disipates it's heat through the rest of the system and the heat exchanger.

in the end though this intercooler will cool to 10 degree above ambient air temps into your throttle body. not to mention the pressure drop is significantly less. for every 1 psi lost in a fmic we lose roughly .3 psi. pretty good difference.

last thing to give another example of how a liquid to air intercooler functions. cook yourself some bacon and then as soon as your finish and turn off the range top. take that pan and dip it in a running kitchen faucet for 2 - 5 seconds and then touch it with your hand. see how fast water cools down heated metal.

david
blown engineering
if your not blown you just suck

 

[SC400TT]

There you go!!! David, let's keep on moving forward...

Ryan

 

[Zuffen]

To see the best way to intercool look at the 04 Ford Lightning.

It uses an airconditioning evaporator in a tank of water (to get it way below ambient temps then when the boost comes up you are using cold water (not cool) to take away the temp rise in the intercooler. Whilst this could not work for constant boost it will work for the way superchargers are generally used. I would question the system is you wanted to run the equivalent of the Daytona 500 in a Lightning.

I had toyed with an evaporator between a supercharger and the manifold but condensation would have been a problem. I think Ford have the best system at the moment.

 

[newkoba]

ford has to run it that way because they run eaton chargers. the biggest and most over bought pieces of crap. anything from 9psi and up the heat deltas are damn near vertical. that is why they have to run an effective cooler on them. and even at that my cooler will cool better than their with out runnign though ac lines. later on down the road my firebird will have a dual climate control installed and i will run ac through the cooler so i have roughly 50 degree intake temps no matter what.

 

[Lextreme II]

If you guys need any type of Turbo parts, please contact Joe from www.boostedsystems.com He can give you the best deal with great service.

 

[SC400TT]

Look what came in today!!! WooHoo!!!

More to come...Ryan

 

[SC400TT]

More...

WooHoo!!!

Ryan

 

[UTA LS]

Newkoba, in your post at the top you talk about being only 10 degrees above ambient temp with a water to air intercooler. This can be easily achieved with a proper front mount intercooler. I have recorded temps of 104 degrees after the intercooler on the intake temps of my friends car while tuning on a mid-high 90 degree day. Keep in mind he is running a 60-1 compressor wheel, not exactly the most efficient. In my opinion I would not run a water to air intercooler on the street due to the fact that through my personal experiances it takes a much larger heat exchanger than you will ever believe to make a water to air intercooler function properly in a street driven application. I have seen someone boil the water in their intercoolers with 10-15 minutes of agressive street driving and their heat exchanger was about 28x18x5, not to mention they also had a large water resevoir, the problem is a lack of proper heat transfer. Water does not really like to transfer heat as well as some might think, not to mention a heat exchanger that is mounted perpendicular to air flow will not cool 100%, it will eventually heat soak and fail to properly work. Now, keep in mind that the compressor wheel of a GT series is higher than a t4 or t series turbo, but is still pretty low in terms of heat output. I really just think you need to be realistic about this project, since it will be driven on the street your main concern should be reliability and driveability of the car.

 

[Trvln Nalzmn]

I think the verdict now is that air to air is the best way to go for street use. Its lighter, cheaper, simpler and performs better in a lot of circumstances. In short bursts air to water might be better but if the water is at ambient temperature then its not better by much. If the water is cooled with something like ice and the ambient tempuratures are high then there are real gains to be had.

I'm going to use a water spray onto an air to air intercooler.

What it really comes down to is what intercooler is used. Water maybe 10 times better (figure pulled out of my ass) at sucking the heat out of the air but if you run an air to air intercooler 10 times the size your back on par and you have an unlimited supply of cooling air. The downside is that throttle responce might be hurt.

Take that monster air to air intercooler and put it in a bath of ice water though....

 

[Zuffen]

Water is 14 times more efficient than air in absorbing heat,

Expert opinion is air to air is best on the racetrack and water to air on the street.

We all know "people" or know a mate who had a mate who's mate had a problem with whatever but the reality is water to air is the best for the street.

Quality boosted vehicles run water/air while the lesser systems run air/air as it's cheap and easy to fit.

The deal is not what you can disperse whilst on boost but how much cool intercooler and it's attendant water you can store for when you go WOT. When was the last time you ran on the street at WOT for more than 30 seconds, think about it 30 seconds from the red light is around 1 mile away.

Any half decent Water/air system will support 2-3 minutes of WOT without seeing a rise in intake temp.

Before making sweeping statements go and read what the experts have to say.

A good starting place is Corky Bells book on supercharging.

 

[Trvln Nalzmn]

I've done a lot of research. The bottom line I have come up with is that a large front mount intercooler is the best solution. Water is a better heat sink but a lot of the advantage can be removed by running a large intercooler. Once you take into consideration the other advantages I suggest that air to air is the one to go for unless you want to put ice in your water to air intercooler.

 

[newkoba]

believe what you would like, i'm only here to help enlighten other by showing viable proof. my water to air is unlike anything else on the market. so for now believe what you must and spend overly absorbant amounts of money on your large pressure dropping fmic. in fact i would say that if anyone could build the exact same kit as me and use a fmic my kit would out perform it. anycase carry on with your debate and pay me no mind.

david

 

[Zuffen]

David,

I'd be interested in some photos of your setup.

I'm a water/air fan and agree with you FMIC's is for those that need the bling and not the performance.

Trvln,

An FMIC can only run at the temperature of the surounding air, just like any heat exchanger. Trouble is as soon as you go on boost the FMIC starts to heat up faster than the air can reduce it's tempurature. With water/air it takes 14 times as huch heat to raise the temp by the same amount.

Where the water air wins is that the FMIC cannot maintain the off boost temps as long as water/air. Science tells us all this is a fact and nothing we can do will change the basic laws of physics. Sure we may bend tham a little but we can't reverse them. If we could that we'd be breeding more intelligent people rather than the other way around.

 

[Trvln Nalzmn]

An FMIC can only run at the temperature of the surounding air, just like any heat exchanger. Trouble is as soon as you go on boost the FMIC starts to heat up faster than the air can reduce it's tempurature. With water/air it takes 14 times as huch heat to raise the temp by the same amount.

Where the water air wins is that the FMIC cannot maintain the off boost temps as long as water/air. Science tells us all this is a fact and nothing we can do will change the basic laws of physics. Sure we may bend tham a little but we can't reverse them. If we could that we'd be breeding more intelligent people rather than the other way around.

With the car moving the intercooler will not heat up faster than the air can reduce temp. With the car moving the advantage that the water has of being able to remove 14 times as much heat than air becomes irrelevant. The air to air intercooler has an unlimited supply of ambient tempurature air.

I agree that at the lights or the start line water intercoolers win hands down because heat from the engine soaks into an air the air intercooler. Thats where something like water spray comes into play.

 

[UTA LS]

Either way, for a street car it will be rather nice, good luck with your project.

I would also like to see some pictures of this water to air intercooler setup.
However, once again, in my opinion a properly sized FMIC will do almost the same job as a water to air intercooler, the main difference is, at the track you can stuff the water resevoir with ice whereas it is much harder to get the same effect by stuffing ice over a FMIC.

Didn't mean to bash you up there if you took it that way, I'm just extremely cautious of what people say about stuff like intercoolers when it comes to a seriously boosted engine. I pretty well take everything with a grain of salt, but at some point I just have to shut up and listen to some new ideas.

 

[Zuffen]

Don't worry I don't think anyone is offended. If they are they shouldn't get into discussions!

I've done an awfull lot of reading and net surfing visiting Sites by the likes of FAT, Eaton.Procharger, ect to learn what's the best system.

I didn't bother talking to my friends or my friend's freinds as they wouldn't know because they're too busy telling tall stories and passing on urban myths and half truths!

There's no substitute for investigating any subject carefully from reliable informed sources.

I don't call this Forum a "reliable source" unles it relates directly to 1UZ mattres they are experienced in, but we all pass on our own experience and the information we've collected along the way. The important thing is only pass on information you know to be correct and discard whatever you heard someone say when they had a beer in their hand.

I'll keep reading and posting but I'll certainly investigate any infoormation I get here so I know I'm heading in the right direction.

I haven't gone down the M112 and water/air intercooler route becaus it was cheap. I went this way beause I believe after a lot of investigation it is the most cost effective method. Twin screw would have been better but I didn't fancy spending the money to have an unsupported (in Australia) supercharger on my car.

 

[Trvln Nalzmn]

If I remember correctly Cokey Bell's book starts off on the first page with a comparison between a supercharger and a turbocharger maybe you should dig it out of the closet Zuffen

Zuffen what boost are you going to run and what efficiency and boost drop do you expect to get out of your intercooler?

At the end of the day there is no bad choice to make. There are clear positives and negatives to either solution and either will perform very well if setup properly.

 

[Blown SC]

So far I have Supercharged
1 x 91 UZZ30 Soarer
1 x 91 UZZ31 Soarer (No Dyno Results on these yet)
1 x 94 UZZ31 Soarer ( 200KwATW with Unichip)
1 x 91 UZZ32 Soarer (Make manual soon) (No Dyno until Car totally completed )
1 x 89 UCF11 Celsior. (No Dyno sheet until owner finished doing other stuff)
My 91 UZZ31 (178KwATW)

I am currently having a Water / Air Cooler investigated for fitment to my Manifold.
If it not work I am making a new manifold to suit an Opcon Charger with W/A Cooler.

So far my best time down the 1/4 mile has been 13.59. @ 107Mph

 

[Zuffen]

Trvln,

I can't dig the book out of the closet as I lent it to Jordy for his use.

Yes I could turbo my engine but unlike Rjay I don't like snails in my engine bay. I prefer them on my Plate! They need garlic but so what.

Turbo's have a place but not in my life!

I'm looking at 12psi and as for pessure drop I leave that in the hands of Eaton, Garrett and Ford as they put the system together.

If I spent all the money I have (and I'm not poor) I would spend about as much as they spent getting 1 idler right.

For the money I'll spend which is (in Ausssie Dollars) Supercharger, manifold, intercooler matrix and injectors $2200.00 Modify manifold $600.00 Pulleys $500.00 Aftermarket ECU $3,000.00 (fitted) all up $7000.00 with tuning I coudn't put together a reliable/controllable turbo system to equal what I will have.

Besides all that I don't have room for a FMIC so that made the choice easier.

I could fit one with mods but no I don't believe in A2A as a rational way to give me what I want.

 

[UTA LS]

Zuffen, is there any way i could get some pictures of your setup. I am considering more than just a turbo for my LS400. I love the low end torque feel of our eaton supercharged shop truck, but I was told that the eaton wouldn't fit under the hood.

I realize that if I am to supercharge my car I would have to build a sheetmetal intake, but that is no issue to me, I'm just curious as to how you were able to fit the factory intercooler into the plenum and still have room between the hood and the intercooler for a supercharger.