immanuel__7

iTrader: (8)

i found this water cooled I/c on ebay, has any one ever tryed this type of I/c
let me know what you guys think about this.

killahrx7

what is it been used on drag or street? i'd say yes for drag no for street.

lax-rotor

iTrader: (1)

Water to air intercoolers are usually overkill depending on what you're going for.

blwn rtr 89'

iTrader: (5)

ive had great results with water to air i/c's in all the turbo l36's and l67 engines ive built, they are great for dyno pulls, and drag cars, the main problem on daily use of the water to air is the heatexchanger, if its not properly mounted, you coolant temp will rise quickly, due to air having to pass through the heatexchanger, a/c cond., then the radiator.

ive never mounted one on a 7 before, so i cant say forshure if its benifical.

if its a dd, personally i wouldent use it on any turbo car, but with proper ducting, and mounting posistion anything possiable.

TitaniumTT

Sorry but I gotta poke ya for this one
would you suggest using it on an n/a?

A2W make sense for cars that tend to heat soak or they need a physically smaller intercooler or need to plumb it it horrible locations. Small radiators or iceboxs can be used as exchangers for the water though. THere are COUNTLESS ways to set these things up. Search is your friend and don't limit it to rx7club

RX7freak08

Ask Scrip7 he bought that off of ebay

Tofuball

For your average FC and driver, I'd say it'll be a lot of effort for a a very small amount of payback over a regular old FIMC.

You'll gain a bit of 'overall' throttle response from it, but it's a bit more weight and effort then a regular IC.

Celica All-Trac's ran them from the factory

Remember they used a separate water pump and radiator just for the IC though.

immanuel__7

iTrader: (8)

ya, i just seen something new and wanted to see if any one had luck with them, but i could see it being a pain in the ***, in the city, stop and go, it might over heat the coolant.
regular i/c would be best all around i think. thanks for the input

anewconvert

iTrader: (1)

IIRC BDC was having a lot of success using a stock RX7 TMIC that was tanked to run water over the core. There is a lot to be said for sub-ambient intake charge temps. That being said it really is a drag strip application. you can use it on the street, and with a good heat exchanger you can keep the coolant temps near ambient, but its more complex, heavier and you do runt he risk of heat soaking the coolant.


BC

Tofuball

For that application, if you really need to get intake temps down that much, try CO2 sprayers on the IC, or just use N2O :P

scrip7

iTrader: (6)

Looks like the thread died out, but FWIW, my a/w ic uses a simple pump from a F-150 Lightning, and I'm using an Arctic Cat ATV radiator with built-in cooling fan. It fits perfectly to the right of the hood latch. The core measures 12"x12"x1.75" and it has it's own expansion tanks and radiator cap. No need for an extra reservoir to add complexity and plumbing. It has 3/4" inlet and outlet, and rubber mounting bushings. Piece of cake. Less pressure drop in the ic than most FMICs. Shorter piping runs, fewer bends. I plan on monitoring temps closely before and after the ic. I can also add an ice reservoir if I want to take it to the track, and have a fuel and spark map in my Megasquirt just for runs with ice. Once I finish collecting parts for my engine build I will make a few threads, including the Megasquirt install, battery relocation, etc.

JStewart

Wow jeff sounds like you have a pretty good project going, Ill give you a call next time im in the city maybe i can swing by and check it out.

scrip7

iTrader: (6)

You're welcome to come by anytime my friend.

NZConvertible

That's no different to a front-mounted air-to-air intercooler. The difference is the front heat exchanger doesn't need to be as big for the same cooling capacity. With plenty of water capacity (i.e. a decent sized reservoir in the line) and maybe a fan on the heat exchanger, the water temps should be able to kept reasonably low.

Your "average" FC owner isn't really into the design and custom fabrication this sort of project would require, but some will enjoy the challenge and work involved. The payback for that work isn't just the performance side, but eliminating the hassle of getting long pipes full of bends out the front, moving stuff out of the way (fog lights, batteries, etc), cutting up brake cooling ducts, compromising the radiator and oil cooler and so forth. A regular FMIC has it's share of disadvantages over a W/A set-up and vice versa.

scrip7

iTrader: (6)

Once I have the engine built and installed, I'm going to experiment a little with i/c placement. I might get away with top mount, but my ic is BIG. I am re-locating the battery and leading coils, so I have an option to put it in that corner. Having the heat exchanger (radiator) on only one side of the car, there is less heat load on the condenser, oil cooler, and rad. I do enjoy a challenging install, and this should be a bit less challenging than some FMICs.

Aaron Cake

iTrader: (1)

I'm planning on running a water to air intercooler on my Cosmo. The main reason I am doing this is to keep the piping to a minimum and to avoid cutting up the car.

The Cosmo is a heavy luxury car and I'm building an engine with torque in mind. Small turbocharger, short intercooler piping and a unique intake manifold. Running pipes out to the front of the car is not my first choice.

It's also a very rare car so I don't want to hack it up to run piping. The water to air unit fits easily in the engine bay and means that I don't have to cut 3" holes through the nose of the car. The water pipes will easily slip through existing openings and the small heat exchanger will mount in front of the rad (plenty of room).

Since the car will not be running high boost or ran into boost for extended periods, it should work out fine.

ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

Theoretically a water to air intercooler should improve performance in both track and dd applications. But from what I'm reading here about it, it sounds like the radiator for the water to air intercooler is lousy or non-existant.

I wonder if you could simply pipe the intercooler inline with the rest of the cooling system, perhaps after the engine and before the radiator. You wouldn't get much of a temperature improvement over a standard intercooler, and you'd need to upsize your radiator to keep from overheating. But, I mean, to keep things simple perhaps.

Oh, and for those who want to do the math before installing an intercooler:
Q = mcdT, or dT = Q / (mc), i.e.:
1. The heat removed from the air is equal to the mass of the cooled air times the specific heat of air times the temperature drop of the air.
2. The temperature increase of the water equals the heat entering the water (which equals the heat removed from the air) divided by the mass of the water times the specific heat of water.

Now if you guestimate how much the air temp lowers then you can know how hot the water will get, assuming none of the heat dissipates (which is true over a short period of time). You can find the density and specific heats of air and water online.

NZConvertible

We're talking about a set-up that hasn't been built yet, so I don't understand where the "lousy" heat exchanger has come from. It certainly couldn't be non-existent either or it wouldn't work. A decent heat exchanger is vital to it working properly.

No, that would be terrible! The coolant temp would always be hotter than the intake temp, so you'd always be heating it instead of cooling it. The idea is to try to keep the intercooler water temp close to ambient, or at least a hell of a lot closer to ambient than the coolant temp...

stylEmon

iTrader: (2)

just thought I'd add, if you are replacing the stock inter-cooler with a A-W IC, you are FAR better off then when you started. Our stock TMIC is terrible. It usually becomes heat soaked on short trips with minumal boost.

I'm not exactly sure how that IC in question works (too busy at work to research it ATM) but i'm sure anything involving water or alcohol into the intercooler will get you MUCH closer to ambient.

I use a simple methanol injector stuck in my intake pipe as a chemical intercooler, and will be adding one after the IC, at the TB here shortly.

Although, I've thought of removing the IC completely. No matter what I do with WAI, the stock intercooler is counter productive in my cooling efforts. But to remove it, I'd have to get a system with warnings and controls mapped into my ECU in case of a failure in the WAI system.

NZConvertible

Only if you do it right. I've seen DIY W/A intercoolers that would be a step backwards from stock because they weren't designed right. It's not the sort of thing you can half-***.

Shorts trips are not a problem because there's not enough time for heat to build up. At speed it cools down quite quickly; in this regard it's better than people assume. It's spending long times at low speed, or when left stationary, that heat soak becomes a real problem. I've measured some scary temps when stuck in traffic or returning to the car an half and hour after last driving it.

It's basically a wated-cooler intercooler. A water jacket surrounds the core, and the water absorbs the rejected heat. It's pumped around a circuit to an air-cooled heat exchanger at the front of the car. Because water can absorb over four times more heat energy than air for the same temp rise, a W/A intercooler can be much smaller than an A/A intercooler with the same cooling capacity. The intake tract pipes can be much shorter because the W/A core stays in the engine bay.

Their biggest problem is heat-soak of the water, particularly when stationary. That's why an in-line reservoir outside of the engine bay is a good idea. This also allows you to fill the reservoir with ice, which can then (temporarily) provide below-ambient intake temps. In normal use though how close you get to ambient temps depends in the whole system's efficiency, just like an A/A intercooler.

Not necessarily. Like I said, the stock IC does work well some of the time. you might find without it you'll be going through more water to get the same cooling. It wouldn't be hard to replace the intercooler with a section of steel pipe to see what happens. That's the only way to know for sure.

slo

iTrader: (1)

I ditched the intercooler in favor of water/methanol injection, its working pretty good so far.

the intake temps go up idling and in vacuum when the system isn't working (largely due to the location of the air temp sensor in the middle of the bottom of the UIM) and then go down once the system activates at 4 PSI.

After 30 seconds in boost (up a long steep hill in high gear) the temps fall from 150-160F after fully heat soaking the sensor with quite a lot of city driving to 110-120F.

stylEmon

iTrader: (2)

I hear ya. In the summer out here in PHX, my water temps alone get scary just on the way home from work.

I was assuming that who ever installs the system would not be half-assing it, but I suppose that is not a safe asssumption!!

So with the water-air IC, you have a resevior and a pump? You can replace your rear washer tank with the IC tank then... or is that too far away?

ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

Nope, check the auxillary injection section. Intake temps on a high boost turbo tend to be much hotter than the coolant. High boost really heats up the air. So really you'd be cooling the intake air, but not nearly as much as you would with cold water. But on anything below 10psi it'd be pretty pointless.

And I was talking about the water to air intercooler's radiator, not the heat exchanger (not the water to air intercooler itself). As in the thing that cools the water with ambient air. Not the thing that cools the intake with the water. So, does that radiator even exist on these setups people are talking about? If not, that would explain why the system only works for a short time before it builds up heat. It isn't dumping the heat anywhere.

TitaniumTT

Departed member played around with something like this - he was plannin on using the stock radiator from a civic but it would fit and would more than likely provide more tha adequate cooling. It was the pump and plumbing and controlling it that was being a PITA.

I Believe BDC was using a bilge pump iirc Those things for the most part are garbage though. I don't know what I would use as a pump. In talking with a buddy of mine who is studing to be a ME living in a house with a bunch of EE's we were tossing around ideas of a variable pump that increases flow based on intake temps and boost. You know, to keep things simple

NZConvertible

That'd be a good spot. The distance doesn't matter, as long as the pump provides adequate flow with the additional losses caused by the long hoses.

Okay, pre-intercooler temps can get that high, but obviously post-intercooler temps are supposed to be much lower. Cooling is about temperature difference, and if the water being used for the intercooler was 180-200degF then that's going to be much hotter than the entering air most of the time (heating it) or only a bit cooler than the air at high load (cooling it a little bit). You'd never do this, it'd be terrible.

I know what you were talking about (technically both are heat exchangers), and yes it's as vital as any other part in the system. There's no such thing as a W/A intercooler without one.