is it possible?

 

sure you could put it there.... but useless and pointless.

 

Air heats up as it's compressed. No point putting a IC before the turbo. If anything, it'll heat the air. You can inject water before the turbo.

 

Air also heats up as it goes into your engine bay -- I wouldn't say completely useless and pointless -- but probably other cheaper more effective ways to lower intake temps pre-turbo. (like cold air inlets, good ducting, etc.)

Try it. Get one of those dinky DSM ICs or something little and have fun. Best way to find out is to experiment and learn from your work... then tell us what happened.

 

except that you would need to have the intercooler in a cool place, not in a hot engine bay, or it would just absorb engine bay heat and make your pre-turbo air temps even HOTTER. Just suck in air from where you'd mount the intercooler ( up front or whatever) and you'd be better off. Intercoolers cool the compressed air, taht's why there aren't ANY n/a intercooled cars. It just wouldn't help at all.

 

www.howstuffworks.com

Look up, "turbo"

James

 

Even if it were there, how could it make the charge any cooler than the ambient air? It couldn't. The reason it's after the turbo is cause turbo air gets hella hot, going thru a hot turbo (that runs off exhaust gas) and getting compressed (feel yer tire valve sometime after ya inflate it).

 

the reason I ask is because I've seen this done on multiple "drag only" cars. so there must be a good reason why they do it.

 

That would be a big restriction in front of the turbo, and you may have been mistaken with what you saw, it would be pointless.

Daniel

 

You could do it with a free flowing enough air/water intercooler using an ice tank. This would in essence give you a car that is running like it is a very cold day. You could even do this on an n/a car. Doing this after the turbo can still get you temperatures this low though if the system is efficient enough. Proper sizing would determine if it were a restriction in the system or not. As long as it flows more cfm than the engine does there shouldn't be a problem. I would only see benefit on a drag race setup and only in the air/water configuration. Air/air would be pointless. Another thing to consider is whether or not the added weight will be more than offset by the added power. Its power to weight ratio that makes you fast.

 

well ok, i do not understand what any of u have just said. but neway, no I am not mistaken. i can see in the IC that there is a large scoop built right into it, so that the air enters thru the IC.

 

maybe that's just one of those funky looking air filters, that are supposed to look like intercoolers, and act like cold air intakes.

putting an intercooler in front of the turbo would just make a big restriction in the air flow.

 

There are two main types of intercoolers:

1) Air to Air: Looks like a radiator, but with no coolant. The outside air is used to cool the air going through the center. Since the outside air is the cooling agent, the inside air cannot ever get any cooler than the outside air. Most intercoolers operate around 70-80% efficiency, which means that the inside air is cooled to about 70-80% of the temperature of the outside air. Since the inside air cannot ever be as cold as the outside air, this type of intercooler would be worthless before the turbo.

2) Air to Liquid: Looks like a big metal tank. Were you to saw it in half, you would see that it's basically an air-air intercooler with a water jacket built around it. The water is the coolant, so the extent that it cools the inside air depends on the temperature of the coolant and the efficiency of the intercooler design. Sometimes the coolant is drawn from the engine coolant, so obviously these types of systems don't cool the air much. Other systems have their own coolant and radiator, so these will cool pretty well, but since the coolant is cooled through the radiator by the outside air, the coolant will not be any colder than the outside air. The ultimate system uses an ice chest with ice or dry ice to cool the coolant, and is able to cool the air below the temperature of the outside air, giving it an efficiency over 100%. The ice chest type of intercooler is the only type of intercooler that could possibly be practical before the turbo.

Also note that all intercoolers cause a pressure drop because the air has to twist and turn through them. Therefore, adding one before the turbo would in effect create a negative boost effect, so the air needs to be cooled a lot to make up for this initial density loss.

I have seen multiple fools who own multiple "drag only" cars, so that's not necessarily a good measuring stick.

 

i think i shud get a pic then.