I am more worried about condensation collecting in the various nooks and crannies in the piping and then everynow and again enter the engine as large drops (not like small droplets). Surely that would harm your engine...?

 

no you have to remember that the velocity that the Turbo is pushing the air would not allow any large droplets to remain intact.

place a small droplet of water on the table and blow on it as hard as you can and see what happens.

 

there was a vendor i believe who had their car setup with an air/air and air/water intercooler.
and they were selling the air/water i/c's as well.

 

if u ask me there is just too much effort and engineering that needs to be done to run one. not only that but sounds to me like u would be adding weight for minimal power gains. and if u ran it with ur AC , wouldnt the AC have to be on in order for it to cool? and haveing the AC on is just negating the power u just made with the cooler air.

 

I don't plan on running it through my AC. But in my old Sr20 240Z i had anywhere from 20-30 degrees below ambient air temps w/ water, glycol, and some ice.

That has alot to do with power when it's 100 degrees out and the air going into your motor was 70-80 degrees..... You tell me who's going to make more power.

 

For every 10*F drop in charge temperature you will pick up ~10BHP.

Without ice you can get ~30*F drop... with ice even more.

Interesting side note. A friend of mine runs Bonneville with a turbo 2 liter. In 5 miles they will turn 30 pounds of ice into luke warm water! That's a lotta BTU's.

 

What you do, is use the extra heat exchanger you are thinking about to cool down the water in the reservoir far below ambiant temp, and have the AC compressor set up to turn OFF under WOT conditions. That way your cooling water for the A2W intercooler is really cold, but the AC compressor does not give extra drag under WOT conditions. For prolonged use at WOT (road racing type of track vs drag track) the heat exchanger run by the AC system would be useless and you would have to fall back on the heat exchanger using ambiant air to cool the water. I think the Ford supercharged vehicles (Lightning, and Cobra) have a system similar to what I talked about, but I think it ONLY has the AC system cooling the water withtout the ambiant air heat exchanger as a backup for prolonged WOT use. It probably keeps the AC compressor running at WOT.

Keith

PS: My comments on the Ford products are from reading and speculation, not first hand experiance.

 

Keith your almost dead on,

The Ford's actually run the freon through the the heat exchanger to cool it down. but since it is mounted in front below the radiator it also uses ambient air.

And the Lightnings and cobras don't care much bcause of the increased loss of the superchager. (besides they have tons of tq to spare)

 

That's only when the rpm is sufficiently high, right? What if you leave it on idle for a while? Sorry to be keep banging on about this, but I think it's a valid point. Engines that run nearly constant rpm like a generator or something have therefore a fairly constant exhaust and intake velocity. Our cars don't and the intake velocit is fairly low at idle. On my A/C for example, lots of water is collected from condensation if I set the thermostat for low temp and low speed fan.

Anyway, i guess you can set a limit on how cool you want it, and I think it's certainly possible to have to cooler than air/air IC without acutally causing condensation.

As for 10degF = 10HP, I think that figure is wrong. I remember it's more of a percentage and not as high as that. More like 10degF=1% increase, which to more evo owners it's about 3-4hp. I'll check on this...

 

spearco core.

 

I never had any corosion or hydrolock issues on any of my other air to water systems.

It's widely used by vortec on their "aftercooled" uspercharger kits.

 

[As for 10degF = 10HP, I think that figure is wrong. I remember it's more of a percentage and not as high as that. More like 10degF=1% increase, which to more evo owners it's about 3-4hp. I'll check on this...[/QUOTE]


You are correct.

As an example, a 300BHP motor with a 50*F decrease in charge temperature would see about a 15BHP gain.

Also keep in mind with a liquid intercooler setup you have the cooler charge at zero road speed where an A2A requires you to be moving in order to gain any benefit.

Plus, at low load or no load conditions, the intake flow also removes heat from the system, its much more efficient than A2A.

Not trying to make the point one method is universally better than the other, that is determined by the application and a bunch of other variables.

 

Interesting info here... Both of my cars are turbo-charged, one has an AWIC and the other is the EVO. I too used to have a problem melting the ICE too quickly but there are a few tricks I figured out to making it last a LONG time.

First is to not let your return line just dump back into the resivor and run over the ice. What I did was run a tube inside the resivior to direct the water returning from the heat exchanger to the bottom of the resivior. That way your not running warm water back over your ice and melting it. This was probably the biggest factory in make my particular system more efficent.

The second thing I did was to add an open circuit hobbs switch that turns on a @1-2psi. That way when I'm not in boost I'm not cicurlating water. Plus now I don't have to worry about hitting a switch everytime I want to hit boost, I just put my foot down and once the switch senses 1psi it turns the pump on. I still have a switch mounted on the center console if I want to override the hobbs switch for when I'm track or something. This winter I'm going to install a little LED light on my gauge pod so I know for sure the pump is on when my foot is down...

And lastly what I am going to do this winter is change the heat exchanger from an old oil cooler that I had laying around to a copper heater core from another car. The copper should absorb and disipate the heat much faster then the steel core I'm using now.

I dynoed the car before I did any of the things I mentioned above and after almost an hour and 14 pulls my IC and manifold were still extreamly cold to the touch... and there was very little ICE left in the resivior too. When on the dyno in the summer time I would see a lot of condensation form on the IC & intake manifold.

Anyone else have tips or tricks they care to share??

 

30 degrees over ambient is terrible. might as well add the weight of the nisei and have 1-2 over ambient because the water and all that other crap weighs a ton.

 

I'm pretty sure he meant under not over. BTW just for reference over the summer in 90+ degree heat I was seeing intake temps in the low 50's.