first post! woo (I've been lurking for a long time)

Here's some pictures of my water to air install in a FD.
The charge coolers have advantages and disadvantages to a FMIC.
Advantages are (in the case of the PWR barrel coolers) :
High flow potential.
Extremely low pressure drop across the core.
only a small proportion of the main cooling radiator is obscured by the additional charge cooler radiator (I see the same temps with the charge cooler as with the original SMIC)

The disadvantages are
the air temps coming out of the cooler aren't as low as a large fmic. This is mainly to do with the short core of the cooler. The tuner who supplied my cooler has measured drops of 80 degrees(C) though, which is pretty amazing considering the size of the core.
They can be a pain in the *** to completely bleed the air out the system. My system will be self bleeding once I replace the bleed screw with a line back to the filler though.
There are no specific kits for the FD, all the pipework and brackets have to be fabbed.

There's quite a few people in the UK with these coolers now, some of which are nurburgring regulars so they've been extensively tested with long periods of WOT
My car's off the road at the moment as I'll be installing a T04Z in the next couple of weeks.. it will be interesting to see how the cooler performs with lower temps going into it (my twins are shot)

http://www.zen44871.zen.co.uk/Pictures/W2AInstall/

 

i have two queries here,

one. why use the water from the engine cooling system? the temperatures are in excess of 80 deg C, so unless the temperature of the charged air is above this, no heat rejection will take place from the air, in any case, its most likely to go the other way with the air getting hotter

two. try explaining to me how you can design a water to air cooler to the same shape as an air to air. think of it this way: the outside air (air-air) is a free commodity; the water isnt (water-air), you have to recover it, basically the most effective design is the barrel when it comes to water-air coolers

 

That's what I meant about the "time" factor; the water can absorb four times the amount of heat that "air" can, but shedding that heat (the process in reverse) takes time unless you have a huge heat exchanger that is well ducted and a good amount of water volume-- adding weight and bulk to a system that could function just as well with an air/air IC.
That's because the barrel-type extractors are so short. However, they still will outflow a fin or bar-type air/air IC because of the straight-thru design.
Are you saying you're seeing the same IATs as the stock IC? If so, no offense, but that's a lot of complexity for not a lot of payoff...
The "secret" is that the reason Merc uses the air/water IC is due to packaging concerns. Especially with their supercharged AMG models, where the design of the supercharger precludes fitting any other type of IC between the blower and the intake manifold.

 

Translations:

Originally Posted by fro
(I see the same temps with the charge cooler as with the original SMIC)

Kento, he was talking engine coolant temps.

"why use the water from the engine cooling system"
AD, he was just saying put the aux exchanger to the side, where an atx oil cooler (or 2nd R1 oil cooler would be. He did not say use engine cooling sys.

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I have posted the benefits of a/l IC's for the FD with a small stock front bumper opening. The PWR gives very low pressure drop, which is critical in getting the most from stock turbos.

The mistake most make is in using an inefficient high pressure oil cooler for the aux unit up front. A well designed, multi pass 3/4" core water based radiator up front, about the size of the condensor, would allow steady state efficiencies better than any SMIC, but not as high as FMIC's. The aux rad up front would be less of an airflow restriction, vs a fmic, so cooler engine temps would be seen at track events, vs fmic.

 

 

air to water

 

Tells us more about this setup, esp. who supplied/made it ?

:-) neil

 

pics for posterity sake.

:-) neil

 

Fascinating...