Intercooler size
Discussion
S600VXR said:
Whilst I have mine apart I was considering replacing the standard SC intercooler with something a little larger. Is there any point in this bearing in mind I will be doing track days next yr with it... probably one for Monkfish or Rapid...?
Best to speak with your wife.........................do's size matter????????????????? 
With you on that.
Could do with either being bigger or repositioned lower so more directly in the airflow... or a deflecter to guide air up onto it. Having started nonintercooled with the previous blower I can testify that the IC does do a good job at lower power levels.
Actually thinking how many times I would miss the front fog lights and what lovely holes they would make.
Could do with either being bigger or repositioned lower so more directly in the airflow... or a deflecter to guide air up onto it. Having started nonintercooled with the previous blower I can testify that the IC does do a good job at lower power levels.
Actually thinking how many times I would miss the front fog lights and what lovely holes they would make.
Id be more concerned about the core under the blower, than the one that cools the water.
the entire setup is inherently a bad design, with limitations everywhere. No room for a decent sized core under the blower, it gets bad heat soak all the time from the engine, and it could easily pose a restriction to the airflow due to its limited size.
the water radiator at the front of the car, is the least of the worrys.
Before considering an upgrade here, it would be worth logging water temps before it gets to the rad core to see if it is even necessary.
the entire setup is inherently a bad design, with limitations everywhere. No room for a decent sized core under the blower, it gets bad heat soak all the time from the engine, and it could easily pose a restriction to the airflow due to its limited size.
the water radiator at the front of the car, is the least of the worrys.
Before considering an upgrade here, it would be worth logging water temps before it gets to the rad core to see if it is even necessary.
stevieturbo said:
Can you guys also descbribe what you mean too.
A Roots style blower does not have an "intercooler" at the front of the car.
If the system does have charge cooling, it will have a water radiator at the front of the car though. I assume this is what you are all referring to ?
A Roots style blower does not have an "intercooler" at the front of the car.
If the system does have charge cooling, it will have a water radiator at the front of the car though. I assume this is what you are all referring to ?
It is a charge cooler stevie.
It is set towards the nearside at the front.
The intercooler / chargecooler / aftercooler naming sometimes really bugs me.
Seems that it's been accepted that a charge cooler is a air/water based system with a separate radiator and an intercooler is and air/air cooling system.
The annoying thing is that naming is all screwed up.
They are both chargecoolers as they cool the air charge before entering the cobustion chamber.
The difference is purely the method used to extract heat from the pre-cooled air charge - either air/air or air/water.
An intercooler technically is a charge cooler between two compression stages. Many large trucks or generator engines have sequential compression stages and a charge cooler between them - hence the "intercooler" name.
Almost all (certainly the ones I know about) car engine chargecoolers are actually of the aftercooler type as they cool the charge after all the compression has occured.
You theorectically could have a chargecooler mounted before any compression but it'd be of limited use - guess it'd be a "beforecooler" or "precooler".
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Seems that it's been accepted that a charge cooler is a air/water based system with a separate radiator and an intercooler is and air/air cooling system.
The annoying thing is that naming is all screwed up.
They are both chargecoolers as they cool the air charge before entering the cobustion chamber.
The difference is purely the method used to extract heat from the pre-cooled air charge - either air/air or air/water.
An intercooler technically is a charge cooler between two compression stages. Many large trucks or generator engines have sequential compression stages and a charge cooler between them - hence the "intercooler" name.
Almost all (certainly the ones I know about) car engine chargecoolers are actually of the aftercooler type as they cool the charge after all the compression has occured.
You theorectically could have a chargecooler mounted before any compression but it'd be of limited use - guess it'd be a "beforecooler" or "precooler".
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VXR_Daz said:
stevieturbo said:
Can you guys also descbribe what you mean too.
A Roots style blower does not have an "intercooler" at the front of the car.
If the system does have charge cooling, it will have a water radiator at the front of the car though. I assume this is what you are all referring to ?
It is a charge cooler stevie.A Roots style blower does not have an "intercooler" at the front of the car.
If the system does have charge cooling, it will have a water radiator at the front of the car though. I assume this is what you are all referring to ?
It is set towards the nearside at the front.
The core in the intake manifold below the blower could be called an intercooler, or more correctly chargecooler.
This is quite a complex area, Ive spent a fair amount of time modifying my chargcooler design and measuring the results each time. Getting hard facts and design advice is very difficult, so I have just explored through trial an error.
First though, my opinion is that if you can fit a normal air to air intercooler then you should do that, as it is the most efficient. Chargecoolers work where there are packaging constraints, such as using a roots blower in the monaro.
Essentially, you must remember that an air to water system, is actually an air to water to air system, which means you now have two sets of inefficiencies. The water is just a conduit of heat. So you need a reasonable size chargecooler to get the heat out of the charge and then a good sized pre-rad to cool the water back down.
I now have a chargecooler system that is about 65% efficient overall (i.e. air to water to air). I have about 40 square inches of pre-radiators on the front, which I read somewhere on spearco's site is their reccomended size. I use 3/4" water hoses and a bosch pump that flows around 15-20 litres a minute.
I also have a 10L water reservoir, this acts as a "damper" - it knocks the temperature spikes off. It takes 30 seconds for the coolant to circulate the entire system, therefore I can have 30 seconds of boost which gets totally absorbed into the water - then assuming I'm off-boost, the large radiators on the front can work at getting that temperature back down. If you are on a track or long periods of boost, then you are soley relying on your pre-rads for your continous inlet temp. The reservoir is also quite good on hot-restart, as its absorbs much of the heat soak in the system during shutdown. I often turn the pump on for 30 seconds before restart, just to purge the heat out of the system. I have also put a big lid in the tank, as one day I might put a bag of ice in there to see if it makes any differences. Drag races do this with big tanks with lots of ice, which is one benefit of a/w systems.
My work on it is here:
http://www.mez.co.uk/turbo8.html
Eliot
First though, my opinion is that if you can fit a normal air to air intercooler then you should do that, as it is the most efficient. Chargecoolers work where there are packaging constraints, such as using a roots blower in the monaro.
Essentially, you must remember that an air to water system, is actually an air to water to air system, which means you now have two sets of inefficiencies. The water is just a conduit of heat. So you need a reasonable size chargecooler to get the heat out of the charge and then a good sized pre-rad to cool the water back down.
I now have a chargecooler system that is about 65% efficient overall (i.e. air to water to air). I have about 40 square inches of pre-radiators on the front, which I read somewhere on spearco's site is their reccomended size. I use 3/4" water hoses and a bosch pump that flows around 15-20 litres a minute.
I also have a 10L water reservoir, this acts as a "damper" - it knocks the temperature spikes off. It takes 30 seconds for the coolant to circulate the entire system, therefore I can have 30 seconds of boost which gets totally absorbed into the water - then assuming I'm off-boost, the large radiators on the front can work at getting that temperature back down. If you are on a track or long periods of boost, then you are soley relying on your pre-rads for your continous inlet temp. The reservoir is also quite good on hot-restart, as its absorbs much of the heat soak in the system during shutdown. I often turn the pump on for 30 seconds before restart, just to purge the heat out of the system. I have also put a big lid in the tank, as one day I might put a bag of ice in there to see if it makes any differences. Drag races do this with big tanks with lots of ice, which is one benefit of a/w systems.
My work on it is here:
http://www.mez.co.uk/turbo8.html
Eliot
It's very similar to the air cooled vs water cooled engine arguments - after all the principles are the same.
I wouldn't say that water is ineffective at transfering heat and the big advantage of air/water systems is that you can easily package the setup and you are not lited as much. For example, you can put the water radiator anywhere (in theory) and have a short intake manifold containing the heat exchanger.
With air/air its fine as long as there is airflow over the system but you generally need a much larger heat exchanger - just look at the setup on the S2 Lotus Exige - the chargecooler is air/air and due to packaging constraints sits on top of the engine (not great in an engine bay that doesn't have the best ventilation to begin with). It's soo large that it completely obscures all rear visibility and provides a limited amount of charge cooling.
Most of the other after market systems for the Exige use air/water chargecoolers as they can fit a smaller heat exchanger and then route water pipes to a front mounted radiator which has much better airflow availabile to it.
the big downside to air/water setups is that you are adding extra fluid weight which you don't have with an air/air setup and secondly you need another pump to push the coolant around.
I wouldn't say that water is ineffective at transfering heat and the big advantage of air/water systems is that you can easily package the setup and you are not lited as much. For example, you can put the water radiator anywhere (in theory) and have a short intake manifold containing the heat exchanger.
With air/air its fine as long as there is airflow over the system but you generally need a much larger heat exchanger - just look at the setup on the S2 Lotus Exige - the chargecooler is air/air and due to packaging constraints sits on top of the engine (not great in an engine bay that doesn't have the best ventilation to begin with). It's soo large that it completely obscures all rear visibility and provides a limited amount of charge cooling.
Most of the other after market systems for the Exige use air/water chargecoolers as they can fit a smaller heat exchanger and then route water pipes to a front mounted radiator which has much better airflow availabile to it.
the big downside to air/water setups is that you are adding extra fluid weight which you don't have with an air/air setup and secondly you need another pump to push the coolant around.
If you had no constraints, I'd say a water based system is the ultimate setup.
But when you have a valley mounted blower, with the core under the blower, it is unfortunately the only setup, which is heavily compromised in terms of space for a decent core.
In this instance, it is most definately not the ultimate setup, but its better than nothing at all.
VooDoo's approach to fitting a twin screw blower to his LSx is very novel.
http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1491...
With it, you can fit a full size A2A intercooler, with obvious benefits over typical Valley mounted blowers. Very ingenious, even if it does look very odd with all that pipework !!!!
But when you have a valley mounted blower, with the core under the blower, it is unfortunately the only setup, which is heavily compromised in terms of space for a decent core.
In this instance, it is most definately not the ultimate setup, but its better than nothing at all.
VooDoo's approach to fitting a twin screw blower to his LSx is very novel.
http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1491...
With it, you can fit a full size A2A intercooler, with obvious benefits over typical Valley mounted blowers. Very ingenious, even if it does look very odd with all that pipework !!!!
stevieturbo said:
If you had no constraints, I'd say a water based system is the ultimate setup.
But when you have a valley mounted blower, with the core under the blower, it is unfortunately the only setup, which is heavily compromised in terms of space for a decent core.
In this instance, it is most definately not the ultimate setup, but its better than nothing at all.
VooDoo's approach to fitting a twin screw blower to his LSx is very novel.
http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1491...
With it, you can fit a full size A2A intercooler, with obvious benefits over typical Valley mounted blowers. Very ingenious, even if it does look very odd with all that pipework !!!!
my eyes are sore after reading the 19 pages of saga. Pity his final website lacks any decent photos of it.But when you have a valley mounted blower, with the core under the blower, it is unfortunately the only setup, which is heavily compromised in terms of space for a decent core.
In this instance, it is most definately not the ultimate setup, but its better than nothing at all.
VooDoo's approach to fitting a twin screw blower to his LSx is very novel.
http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1491...
With it, you can fit a full size A2A intercooler, with obvious benefits over typical Valley mounted blowers. Very ingenious, even if it does look very odd with all that pipework !!!!
But in VooDoo's case, he is developing a kit, for himself, the way he wants it. Although its likely to become a commercial venture too.
The beauty of his kit, is that it fits under standard bonnets, and has proper intercooling, as well as being a twin screw !!!!
Its almost an ideal SC setup.
Water injection is of course an option, and a very effective one, not to be overlooked for valley mounted blowers.
Very hard to actually monitor intake temps with a valley mounted, chargecooled setup though, as you would almost need a temp sensor in each intake port.
Same with water injection, you would need one per port, unless spraying before the blower is likely to offer any benefits ???
The beauty of his kit, is that it fits under standard bonnets, and has proper intercooling, as well as being a twin screw !!!!
Its almost an ideal SC setup.
Water injection is of course an option, and a very effective one, not to be overlooked for valley mounted blowers.
Very hard to actually monitor intake temps with a valley mounted, chargecooled setup though, as you would almost need a temp sensor in each intake port.
Same with water injection, you would need one per port, unless spraying before the blower is likely to offer any benefits ???
Having taken a look at a chargecooled monaro yesterday at Monkfish, there is definately scope to put a much larger pre-rad in the front. Whether it needs to be bigger can only be deturmined by looking at the inlet temperatures under boost.
I took a look at Harry's project also - hmm, drool...
I took a look at Harry's project also - hmm, drool...
wormus said:
Just to clarify, if your intercooler lets you run sufficient boost to test the strength of the internals of your engine then surely it's good enough?
chargecooling makes the process more efficient and would mean that you could develop the same amount of power with less power taken by the supercharger.
for example, if you increase the intake valve diameter and lift you reduce the primary restriction in the intake. this would reduce boost pressure but let more air in during the induction phase thus more power.
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