In theory there should be no problem, as long us you use extra methanol to make up for the intercooler. Here's some math to figure out how much methanol you need to replace an intercooler. Each step is needed to figure out the next step.

1. PRESSURE AND TEMPERATURE
Adiabatic Compression Equation: P1T1^0.283=P2T2^0.283

Pressure and temperature are in absolute units. To convert gauge pressure to absolute pressure, add 14.7psi. To convert degrees fahrenheit to degrees rankin (absolute temp), add 460.

Adiabatic means no heat entering or leaving; i.e. adiabatic means no intercooler. To figure out the pressure and temperature with an intercooler, you'll have to measure it.


2. AMOUNT OF AIR ENTERING YOUR ENGINE
The 13B engine displaces 1.3L of air for every revolution of the eccentric shaft (tach reading). Or it displaces 3.9L of air for every revolution of the rotor, which results in 3 revolutions of the eccentric shaft. Either way you get the same answer.

Air density is directly proportional to absolute pressure and inversely proportional to absolute temperature. So from the air density, the engine rotational speed, and the displacement you can figure out many pounds of air is getting into your engine each second.


3. AMOUNT OF METHANOL YOU NOW NEED TO COOL YOUR ENGINE
Lookup the heat of vaporizations for methanol and gasoline. Look up the specific heats of methanol, gasoline and air. See how much of each you are putting into your engine, and take a weighted average to find the overall heat of vaporization and specific heat (air has no heat of vaporization because it doesn't vaporize). Divide overall heat of vaporization by overall specific heat. Divide by the total mass of the 1.3L intake charge. That's how much cooling you're getting. Figure out your intake temps after this additional cooling. Make sure your intake temps with methanol and no intercooler match your intake temps with an intercooler and you're good to go.

That is a whole lot of theory. It is just easier for me to log intake temps and run with the varied mixtures of water/methanol...and see what mixture works best for me. I have already established that water/methanol injection is more than sufficient to replace the intercooler. I can get WAY below ambient IAT with my setup which is impossible with an intercooler alone.

I want to keep it more water than methanol because if a component containing a flamable liquid fails, it ends up in a lot more damage than one carrying a non-flamable liquid.

I would definately be running an intercooler if it wasn't such a big sacrifice to engine cooling. There just isn't enough space in the front of an FD to fit everything that ideally needs to be there.

Well I am off to solve my electrical and fuel pressure issues...

:drool: :)

Can't wait to finish my POS

So, right now you are running a pre turbo 70/30 mix, and you see below ambient IAT?

No I have both pre and post turbo jets and I am varying my percentages. With 50/50 I was below ambient at 15psi ... with 70/30 we will see?

I found this page when milling around on the aquamist forum. It highlights what different water/alcohol mixtures do when using the same map. I figured it would be relative as it is on an FD.

http://www.geocities.com/sdminus/index.html

It clearly illustrates the timing needs of higher water mixes because of the slow burn vs meth as a fuel replacement. The author didn't say, but apparently he didn't trim the fuel value either when spraying.

Josh

Good stuff, Cozmo Kraemer. Keep it going. Can't wait to hear more.

+1 for AI.

B

Can't wait, might take me another year before I can test it :wallbash:

I was on the dyno last Saturday with Steve Kan in SoCal. Well things didnt go so well and a host of issues held me up. I was rather disapointed with Steve. I came in with the car idling a little high but not hunting or stalling, and my partial throttle maps decently tuned but needing a little work (I got 22mpg at 85mph on the way out to LA). My car suffered a ton of ignition breakup at WOT and I was having strange voltage issues with volts dropping from 14.4v to as low as 12.3v for one recorded cell on the log, then recovering to 14.4v only to drop for another cell. I am attributing this to a grounding issue. I will reground everything, rewire the ignition and charging system and run a few logs to see if I can fix everything. Well I told Steve to tune the partial throttle and idle. When I took my car back, the car would die at idle and bog bad during partial throttle accel. I brought the car back to him as it was REALLY unsafe to drive like this and WAY worse than when I brought it in. He basically set the partial throttle map back to the way it was. I thought this kinda sucked since nothing changed with all the time and money I had dedicated to the weekend. With all my full throttle problems I just wanted to get my partial throttle and idle nailed down. Not a great experience. Anyway....

I was also seeing fuel pressure fall off above 5000rpm so I purchased the Rotary Performance HP fuel pump and an HKS Twinpower as I feel my Jacobs rotary pro pack is on its last legs with the breakup issues.

I should have all of this installed in the next week and I will be back on the dyno there shortly after. I am also gonna downsize my throttle body water injection jet to a .5mm from a .9mm as I think it was a little too much before. I am also VERY ANXIOUSLY awaiting the finishing of the primary/secondary injector summer by Richard @ Aquamist. Once that is done the HFS-5 system will finally work as designed on the Rotary and we will be in business.



There were two good things to come out of the dyno trip. I had a board flat torque curve from 3000-6000rpm (which is where he let off due to my issues), it maintained an untuned 250ish ft/lbs and looked to be climbing still at 6000rpm (but difficult to decipher with the breakup). AND my car saw 55C IAT with the water/methanol turned off at 15psi (w/ socal ambient temps). A stockish FD with an upgraded Greddy SMIC saw 56C IAT at 12psi...and suffered from the lack of engine cooling as he could only perform a few pulls before shutting things down to cool, while on my car he went pretty solid for an hour before giving up on the WOT maps.

this continues to be an interesting thread. thanks to all for sharing.

might your fuel pressure volatility relate to your wavering voltage?

my fuel system w 850/1600s is a garden variety Cosmo pump and a Kenne Bell Boost A Pump. w a modest (+20%) bump in volts to the fuel pump i have no problem running the 4900 CC/Min of injectors to 90% duty. (since i digitally log my fuel pressure i can assure you that at 8000 rpm it is rock solid.)

the BAP only triggers in boost so as not to over-burden the pump.

prior to running alcohol i ran a duty cycle in the high 80s. my duty cycle w alcohol if around mid 60s.

so volts, as you know, can major effect fuel pressure.

hc

But the fuel pressure will just gradually fall off and not recover. My volts fall for just one logged cell then recover to 14.4v. in a 1500-6000rpm run only 2 logged cells were below 14v. I would think the pump would atleast be able to build pressure again if it were not a weak link. We will soon find out.

i agree w you on fuel pressure-volts given the specifics.

Cozmo Kraemer

I agree that the IC blocks the outlet air flow from the radiator. Luckily the fans

can overcome the restriction. Just stick your hand next to the radiator (from the

grill side of course) you can feel the cool flow. It uses pressure to overcome

resistance.


Cozmo Quote:

"I had almost an identical setup to you when I was running intercooled. The

reason why your heat soaked intake temps come down so fast is because of the

AI not the intercooler."


It was just my intercooler. I worked to make my IC setup as efficient as practical.

All ductwork, as you already know, has to seal properly to be effective. Mine has

gasket foam surrounding the radiator and filling the gaps next to the IC inlet duct

to best use the cool ambient grill air.


Case in point: I did a 90 mile trip to tune a friend’s car. My IC system ran 30ºC (84

ºC H²O), 3º C above ambient (27º C morning). I held these temps for 20 miles till

a traffic jam on a high-rise bridge going in New Orleans. My stop and go temps

went to 46ºC (86ºC H²O). After the tie-up my temps dropped at a rate of about 1

º C per tenth mile, nonlinearly decreasing back to only 35º C. After about 5 miles

of steady 35ºC (55MPH still in town) I decided to spray to see if it would again

hold 30º C. I did and it held 30º C for the next 20 miles. I then turned on the AC

to see how much it would increase. It didn’t increase for the next 20 miles.


On the return trip in the afternoon, the car, parked in the sun all day, started at

55ºC IAT and then dropped ≈1ºC per tenth mile till it got down to 35ºC, again 3

ºC above afternoon ambient of 32ºC. (I did inadvertently spray on an entrance

ramp about 5 miles into the trip, but the system was not used except those two

times).


On your new system ( it really does look uncluttered!). You should still duct the

radiator intake shroud to prevent side and top re-ingestion of fan discharge. The

filter in the grill is smart also.

Good Luck
Barry

When I was originally running the PFS intercooler and intake setup, I did have a weatherstripping seal to the duct. It was pretty well sealed but it didn't prevent my constant heat soak issues in traffic here in the summer time.


Your ambient temps are also a reason why you don't have issues. I didn't have any real issues with the car's cooling when ambient temps were below 100F (38C). I had many, many issues when the ambient temps were over 110F (44C). Not only would my intercooler heat soak, but the fans could not keep up cooling the car. When we removed the intecooler we gained enough flow that now the cooling system could keep up even in 110F ambient temps.

I think intercoolers work very well when the temperatures get down low enough that there is enough of a difference in ambient temps and hotside compressor discharge, but that isn't the case where I live. My car runs so much better without the intercooler that I wonder why anyone running 10psi or less uses one at all? I have enough evidence to make a VERY strong case that it isn't needed, even without W/I. The front end of the FD made too many compromises to keep the car looking a certain way. If there was a larger area for heat exchangers and a duct for a well designed cold air intake, there is not doubt I would be running an intercooler. But I can almost say for certain that I won't go back to one because my car runs so much cooler now you could run it hard even in the 100+ degree days.

Ignition breakup -- What plugs ya got in there, Cozmo?

Also, was the breakup occuring with AI injection or w/o? With AI, it's possible you were over-saturating the charge and blowing spark out.

B

Here's my take on it: The idea behind the intercooler is an attempt to drop the IAT's of the charge primarily to help reduce the probability of knock and secondarily to help with potential loss of power, both due to high IAT's. However, my rub with it is the IAT problem is more of an issue with a more volatile fuel like pump gas than it is for higher octane fuels. The theory I've been proposing for awhile is that high IAT's in an existing charge, when getting into the compression stroke, only getting hotter compared to a lower IAT, which creates a pre-ignition event caused by the auto-ignition of the fuel in the charge prior to timed spark. For progressively lower octane fuel, IAT seems to be a more and more paramount thing to address when building a setup.

My own experience with AI however contradicts this common paradigm and suggests that an intercooler is of lesser importance, if not needed at all, depending upon the load the motor is going through. Will it help? I think so. I think it's reasonable to suggest that it won't hurt as far as performance goes. It is absolutely necessary? The longer I do this with respect to AI, the less I think so. I'm with Cozmo on this. The numbers I've seen time and again show that AI (I use methanol specifically) in high enough quantities can do the same job of an intercooler, if not better, and therefore remove its negative effects (more specifically those of a front-mounted unit that enable the possibility for higher water and oil temps). I like to call it "chemical intercooling".

I've got an FC w/ the stock top mounted intercooler. Unless I pursue the A2W stuff more, I have no plans of removing it. The datalog shown below is from mid Dec time last year and is an example that corroborates what I'm saying. The turbo was a 60-1 HIFI w/ a 0.96 A/R P-Trim hotside; arguably being way, way overspun to yield the pressures it's achieving in the manifold. Have a peek at not only the boost and spark advance but most notably the IAT.


http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...n/Alky68-1.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...n/Alky68-2.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...n/Alky68-3.jpg

This was a daily thing for months and months inclusive of summer time Texas heat.

B

That's awesome to see those temps keep dropping and dropping :icon_tup:

I have 9s all around. But I think the breakup was due to the wires. I just replaced them with brand new NGK stock wires and WOW! did the car wake up. The wires that were in there were TOAST..I mean DONE! I dont know why I let that go so long. I wish Elliot would have put new wires on when he installed the new engine...

I dont anticipate breakup issues when I finish the latest round of electrical troubleshooting. I rewired the charging harness, and I am going to rebuild the ignition harness as soon as my TwinPower gets here. I dont want to go over 450whp or so so that ignition should be plenty.

Part of my electrical problems were related to the harness to the alternator voltage regulator. I repaired that and now i have what appears to be rock solid 14.1v (measured by the PFC)...I will run a log tonight to see if it cures the full throttle voltage drop issues as well.

I can't see your log file from work. I am anxious to give it a read when I get home!

great data Brian

Bonus! I replaced mine with stock NGK ones as well. Nice work finding the problem! I don't trust old or aftermarket wires. :)

I agree, but keep in mind the problem that AI potentially poses: We're throwing fluids at them that challenge the spark system in ways that gasoline in and of itself won't. Water, with respect to what I know about it, takes alot more spark energy to "light" it and convert it to steam. Alcohol, for it to produce the equivalent power as gasoline, requires nearly twice the volume. So, generally speaking, the charge will be much more saturated than when running on gasoline alone. So, the "standards" that we're accustomed to as far as, "this ignition system can handle (x) horsepower" won't apply accurately anymore to what we're doing. The focus, therefore, I think needs to be placed on how we can make the ignition system hardy enough to be able to light the chemical soup mix we're throwing at it at all loads.

I had the same problem with the same alternator and same wiring. One of my genius crimp jobs went bad and came loose. The voltage at the car was then 11.9VDC while running.

It's a link over from Photobucket. That site blocked from your work?

B

I fixed the voltage issues and have the logs to prove it! It was related with the wiring in the charging harness. I pulled it all apart and examined every wire. I was up till 4am on Sunday. There was a piece of the wire that goes to the alternator's regulator that was completely exposed and nearly broken (hanging on by a tread) way down inside the harness. I soldered the wire back together and protected things as best I could with quality heat shrink and I have rock steady 14.1v under boost...but I still have have some irregular voltage at idle, but I am not going to worry about it because it is still above 13.5v so...

A new charging harness will be installed before next summer.

Yep...communists! lol....

I have a 15psi run to about 6500rpm showing my IAT drop like a rock with a .8mm aquamist jet (about 400cc/min) and 50/50...

I have another 15psi run with straight water off a .3mm precomp jet (about 120cc/min) and my IAT goes from 52C to about 60C during the run. SO I need more flow or more methanol. I ran out of time but I was going to try a 50/50 mix with just the precomp jet.

I really need to be on the dyno after my car is fully tuned and fool around with mixtures and locations. There are SO many variables!

Sweet!

Hey Cosmo, I am very curious what your post compressor temps with no AI are?

I couldn't find that data anywhere in the post.

Also what is your OIL temp (and where is the temp taken), and what is your oil cooling setup?

After reading this post I am going to try running non intercooled in my car. A 13B-rew powered FC. The FMIC causes a considerable rise in not only the water temps, but the oil temps also, as its blocking both the oil coolers (2 stock fc coolers) and the radiator.

My oil temps vary with load a lot more than the coolant temps. With steady state cruise my oil temps are around 87C...with a little boosted driving through medium/light traffic I am around 92C or so. My oil temps are measured in the oil pan (so one of the hottest spots to measure). I have the R1 dual oil coolers, with the stock ducts.

My coolant temperatures never move off of 87C while any sort of motion is present...(ie. stop and go traffic, stoplight to stoplight driving, freeway in 110F and the a/c going, etc.) If you just let the car sit and idle in 100F weather the coolant will go up to where the fans kick to medium speed (95C I think) and stop there. My oil is right around 100C in this scenario. As SOON AS you start moving at all, temps cool VERY fast....10x faster than my SMIC setup. So that tells me the radiator sees WAY WAY more air.

Continous 15psi pulls in 90F weather produce about a 65-68C IAT without water injection. WIth the tiny amount of water going in precompressor this was reduced about 10 degrees C....so if you are going to be running around without an intercooler...run low boost 10PSI or less...or some sort of AI, to prevent things from getting out of hand.

I'm going to start out with water injection because I don't want to re-tune much, and maybe go with water/alcohol mix down the line.