air to water intercooler
- Thread starter allen600
- Start date
pros are that you can get better cooling depending on the setup you run. cons are that its more complex. You still have to run some sort of heat exchanger on the front of your car, you must use a reservoir, although the larger the reservoir and more efficient the exchanger you run the better.
with an air/water setup its actually possible to get your intake temps BELOW ambient air temperature. Assuming the use of ICE in the reservoir. Even without ice, if your reservoir is large enough and the heat exchanger is efficient enough, you can still have temps much lower than with an air/air intercooler.
You need a reservoir, a heat exchanger, a pump, and the intercooler itself. as well as piping and hose and fittings. Given then you dont have to run the piping to the front of the car anymore, you also gain the benefit of extremely short piping.
Most people dont go this route due to the complexity of the setup.
with an air/water setup its actually possible to get your intake temps BELOW ambient air temperature. Assuming the use of ICE in the reservoir. Even without ice, if your reservoir is large enough and the heat exchanger is efficient enough, you can still have temps much lower than with an air/air intercooler.
You need a reservoir, a heat exchanger, a pump, and the intercooler itself. as well as piping and hose and fittings. Given then you dont have to run the piping to the front of the car anymore, you also gain the benefit of extremely short piping.
Most people dont go this route due to the complexity of the setup.
Pros: Active meaning in stop start traffic or high boost low forward speed situations it doesn't heat soak like an A2A
Cons: Weight and complexity, and for higher power the Hardware gets very big/hard to fit in a Mk3.
Cons: Weight and complexity, and for higher power the Hardware gets very big/hard to fit in a Mk3.
Not to mention once it does heat soak it can take a longer time to remove the heat, especially if you have a large reservoir of coolant.
Really, the only one I've dealt with was on a Celica down here in California. And if you did heat soak it took 8-10min normal driving before the temps were back down to where we could boost again. When we switched over to air/air the time was reduced to about 3-5min. Though the system you had on your MKIII probably had considerably more flow than the one I played with on my friends Celica
If you have a large enough reservoir and an efficient enough exchanger it really shouldnt heatsoak at all. Lots of people use those tiny little 1 or 2 gallon reservoirs. Great for a drag race car where its only making a single pass and then cooling off. If you're driving that sucker and boosting and driving and boosting and driving, step it up and get a nice 5-7 gallon reservoir in the trunk.
Why not just clock the turbo up, and run a pipe from the turbo straight to the intake manifold. Use meth/water injection, and heat wrap the pipe? would that not be cool enough air? You would see boost alot quicker too. Has anyone ever done something like this?
has anyone ever done this? or know if that would be cool enough air to be safe? I honestly don't see the point in having an intercooler on a 7m when you have a cross over pipe. my cross over pipe would get so hot it would burn you if you touched it... doesn't that make the intercooler pointless if the air gets burning hot right before going into the throttle body? Also there are alot of cars running top mount intercoolers.. those things get heat soaked really easily especially when you aren't driving fast..
SO to me it seems like this set up would work.. Clock turbo straight towards the throttle body. run a 3inch pipe from the turbo straight to the throttle body.. Use a good Meth/water injection setup, inject it into pipe. Heat wrap the pipe really well. and on top of that run a true cold air intake off the turbo. Have the intake run up into the front bumper so it picks up air from out side the engine bay. How would this be any worse than my cross over pipe getting so hot you cant touch it? or a heat soaked top mount intercooler?? Seems like this set up with meth should run cooler than either of those two setups? If im wrong about this someone please inform me... Iv really been looking into running my setup like this, just to do something completely different than everyone else, and also because it would be pretty much instant boost.
SO to me it seems like this set up would work.. Clock turbo straight towards the throttle body. run a 3inch pipe from the turbo straight to the throttle body.. Use a good Meth/water injection setup, inject it into pipe. Heat wrap the pipe really well. and on top of that run a true cold air intake off the turbo. Have the intake run up into the front bumper so it picks up air from out side the engine bay. How would this be any worse than my cross over pipe getting so hot you cant touch it? or a heat soaked top mount intercooler?? Seems like this set up with meth should run cooler than either of those two setups? If im wrong about this someone please inform me... Iv really been looking into running my setup like this, just to do something completely different than everyone else, and also because it would be pretty much instant boost.
This setup would only work on a low pressure turbo system. The process of compressing air is what heats it. Therefore more you compress it the more it heats. And the air can get very hot. Especially as a compressor moves outside of it's efficiency range. The use of an intercooler of some form is mandatory to cool the intake charge down. A Meth water setup will only do so much. Plus an intercooler is simple and an always on type of thing. A meth/water setup is a complex system with many possible failure points. If the system hiccups for an instant or you run low on the fluid, the engine is gone.
I've ran non intercooled setups in the past, it all comes down to detonation control with the fuel type you're using.
vv Boost+ ww Intake temp+ xx Fuel+ yy Compression+ zz Ign timing will be your detonation threshold, if you keep any of these below their limit the engine will survive, IC's are just a way of getting a major drop in ww which allows more of the others and more power.
I ran a 3.4L Toyota V8 with twin T04's back in the day with no IC @ 30 psi, the compromise was Meth injection and 6.5:1 Compression.
As Dirgle has noted this type of setup is a Grenade with the safety pin removed....
Get a dud load of fuel or run out of Meth and it's done.
vv Boost+ ww Intake temp+ xx Fuel+ yy Compression+ zz Ign timing will be your detonation threshold, if you keep any of these below their limit the engine will survive, IC's are just a way of getting a major drop in ww which allows more of the others and more power.
I ran a 3.4L Toyota V8 with twin T04's back in the day with no IC @ 30 psi, the compromise was Meth injection and 6.5:1 Compression.
As Dirgle has noted this type of setup is a Grenade with the safety pin removed....
Get a dud load of fuel or run out of Meth and it's done.
suprafanatic;1613917 said:
Yep. Aftermarket turbochargers and centrifugal superchargers do it unless the kit is made for about 9 or 10 lbs and up. On non boosted cars from the factory.
To expand on this... the crossover pipe may get really hot, however, that's not actually a good measure of how hot the intake temperature is. I have had an intake temp sensor that measures the air and compared it to an IR thermometer checking the temperature of the pipe itself, and seen huge discrepancies - 40C in some cases.Dirgle;1614050 said:
The pipe is heating up because it sits directly above the exhaust manifold.
The air temp is based on how much the turbo is compressing the air.
The air inside the pipe moves past the hot part of the pipe so damn fast it doesn't really have enough time to change temperature. Think of how you can run your finger through a candle flame without burning yourself.
very well lol.. I will put my idea to rest. The idea just kinda popped into my head while i was finishing putting my motor back together. I have a front facing intake manifold, full 3inch piping, and a bigger 76mm turbo... my problem is i cant clock the turbo down to run the stock location of the IC piping... the turbo has to be clocked up.. so how should I go about running my IC piping from my turbo down?
I was just thinking about routing it that way, just dont want the piping to get in the way of the intake on the turbo.. Also want it to still look good.. That way looks pretty good, i wasnt sure if there would be room with the wall there, but i can see there is.