Water to air intercooler

[VR4Rocket]

This is an interesting one........

http://www.boostcruising.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=453999

Anyone know much bout these?

 

[unclepaulie]

very effecient, so can essentiallly run pipe straight from turbos to throttle body (so very short piping) and place that canister somewhere in between, but a fair amount of secondary piping for the water.

theyre better then a normal FMICs, major drag racers use them or they fill them with dry ice as they only need it for <10 seconds. but with this u dont get the big shiny cooler hangin out front, good for sleeper effect.

i considered/am considering one for the galant


thats my knowledge

 

[VR4Rocket]

Well that guy is selling it for $300 or so...

 

[unclepaulie]

is he sellin the entire kit or just the barrel? looks like just the barrel from his ad

 

[Kenneth]

Water to Air is more effective for general purpose and stop/start (drag racing) driving, not usually as effective for track racing where you sustain high engine load.

However I would caution you to do some in depth research before going down the Water to Air route, as it isn't hard to make a really crappy system in which case you might as well have not bothered.

 

[Guest]

could you have both fmic and inline air to water cooler?? that would be mega cool < the air i mean

 

[godzilla]

Remembering everyone, be it air to air or water to air, all these coolers can only cool to a certain temperature not exceeding that of the ambient air flowing through the heat exchanger.

 

[frozen]

Remembering everyone, be it air to air or water to air, all these coolers can only cool to a certain temperature not exceeding that of the ambient air flowing through the heat exchanger.

..unless you use ice.

 

[godzilla]

No one wants to hear about your drug habit Josh...

 

[Gary31]

Remembering everyone, be it air to air or water to air, all these coolers can only cool to a certain temperature not exceeding that of the ambient air flowing through the heat exchanger.

Not exactly true, that would be the limit for 'sensible heat transfer' (this is the heat transfer that is driven by temperature difference), depending on a number of other factors it could be possible to cool to a temperature lower than this with the use of 'mass transfer' (essentially energy absorbed by the evaporation of water e.g. water spray) there are some articles that think this is not a effective option however i believe this could work with a good atomization, distribution and water flow rate.

the idea of this setup is interesting as the use of water can significantly increase the heat transfer rate (largely driven by water's high specific heat capacity) however to work properly there should be some baffles and extra tubing that could increase the pressure drop across the cooler.

mostly of the top of my head so probably a few mistakes.

 

[Scottie]

A good Water to Air setup will cost you a fair bit. Have seen really effective ones fetch 2-3k new.

 

[trounced]

Autospeed i think it was had one that used WAX to keep it cool, was a sealed unit with wax around the intercooler, they said it had good results.

http://autospeed.com.au/cms/A_110772/article.html

 

[Kenneth]

You could, but the best you would get out of it is the maximum cooling of any one of the coolers. And that is only under optimium conditions.

After you factor in the extra efficiecy loss from the extra pipe work, you might as well not have done it.

In my mind, the most effective thing to do is to run a good (will probably end up expensive) Water to Air system day to day, and have a decent Air to Air system you can fit for track days.

could you have both fmic and inline air to water cooler?? that would be mega cool < the air i mean

 

[Kenneth]

Downside was that you needed to have an AVERAGE charge air temperature of less than ~50 Degrees Celcius.

On a vehicle that produces boost at the drop of a hat, I don't think this would work well.

Autospeed i think it was had one that used WAX to keep it cool, was a sealed unit with wax around the intercooler, they said it had good results.

http://autospeed.com.au/cms/A_110772/article.html

 

[unclepaulie]

i hav seen a setup where the cold aircon air (like 17degreesC) was routed over the water cooler, it worked quite well but its a roundabout way to go.

 

[ygoslo]

Luke Fink ran one of these on his Onevia and it looked like a great system, but I'm always wary of trying to do things differently from everyone else when it comes to modification. It is always a more expensive and inconvenient way to do things.

 

[unclepaulie]

but then there is no ingenuity, but uniqueness requires dollars and sense


plus, for only relativly minor gains, theres more things to go wrong and its more expensive.

 

[ygoslo]

plus, for only relativly minor gains, theres more things to go wrong and its more expensive.

Precisely.

That's essentially what I just spent 40 minutes on the phone to my mate trying to convince him of. I'm almost certain I failed, but anyway...

 

[Guest]

The 150kW turbo Subaru Liberty (Legacy) RS uses this factory-fitted water/air exchanger that has a 4kW capacity.

This heat exchanger also works quite effectively when power is increased to about 210kW.

This guy used it on a highly modified WRX using the same Legacy RS cooler-----> http://www.freewebs.com/wrxic/airwater.htm

I have one an tried it out using running water from a hose an the air out of it is very cool like AC. I know it wont be the same when using stored water but like someone said once you not circuit racing an the water gets time to cool back down you will be ok.

An wow even with the running water from the mains the intake pipes on this cooler gets extremely hot an impossible to keep you hands on it for 3 seconds but it cools down quickly on idle...........an this is all low boost under no load