Definitive solution for M12 intercooler
Discussion
Dear All,
Having spent close on a year or more looking into this problem I am pleased to report that I think we now have an answer. I must first make it clear that the guy who developed this, Matt Faulks, (who posts here on Pistonheads) is going to make this a commercial product but as we are 99% there he has agreed that I can make this posting to give you all the heads up. He will formally release the product when he’s happy and when he’s got some documented readings rather than our “put your hand on that and feel how cold it is” assessments but we were both so pleased I managed to persuade him to let me make this post now. I reckon we are 2 weeks away from the dogs danglys. We tested the near final production version on my car on Saturday and the results were nothing short of astonishing. Despite what is being said about fans for the IC we proved today you do not necessarily need fans to get the induction air down to the magic 40'c.
Basicaly there is a two stage process to the solution;
Stage 1
Although we know the airflow over the M12 IC is minimal it is not zero, there is some air flowing but its just not enough to get the standard IC to function. One option is to make “bigger” i.e deeper cored versions of the existing IC. These are generally thicker from front to back. However they don’t work because whatever little extra cooling you get is counterbalanced by the disadvantages of having even more metal to act as a heat sink and even greater volumes of air in the induction tracts.
Rather than “go large” Matt’s solution was to go for a more efficient version of the current IC, to apply science to the problem. This would wring every last drop of cooling ablility from what little air was flowing. We tested it yesterday at Plans Motorsports’ place in Dunsfold. This is a brand new high performance intercooler specifically designed for the M12. I won't go into the technical details but its been designed by Matt, an acknowledged expert in the field, and fabricated to F1 standards. The core is a new super efficient design. The tubes have a greater internal surface area with full width internal vanes and external fins that are computer controlled oven brazed. This means that the external fins get brazed to the core tubes along the entire length of each fin. The fin to tube contact is thus seamless metal to metal and not the usual mechanical gripping you find in most cores. The cores themselves are actually made by people who do rads and coolers for the F1 teams. Anyway I’m sure he’ll fill you in on the details but the bottom line is that the thermal transfer efficiency of this core is orders of magnitude greater than the standard one.
On the bench this new core will improve the temp drop by 20'c or more over the standard one. His design also has smaller end tanks which reduces the overall volume.
It’s designed as a swap out. It took less than an hour to fit, you'll need to pop a few of the rivets in the IC box shrouding to enable you to flex the walls apart, but its nothing beyond a competent Noble owner. Fittings and overall size wise its a direct swap replacement. 4 bolts and 3 circlips and a couple of rivets is all that's involved.
Then we took the car and gave it some sustained blasts around the perimeter of Dunsfold (showing some prospective Midengined sportcars series entrants)
getting it nice and hot under the rear clam. Now my car is down on power at the moment and is only boosting to 0.6 but driving it there was no doubt
that it had a crisper response to the throttle and I could detect no power drop off at all. Each time we came back we lifted the clam and felt the IC
and found that the outlet end was so cold if felt it had been refrigerated.
Unfortunately I'd forgotten my pyro but the temperature difference between the inlet and outlet ends was dramatic. We all reckoned that the outlet side of the tank was at close to ambient temperature. Now in similar conditions the standard IC's outlet temp on my car is a documented 55'C. Everyone
present confirmed that this new IC was far colder to the touch than the standard one was. So with this IC on an M12 you do not need fans or scoops or ducts or anything else. I really was very very impressed.
However we must remember this was on a bloody chilly day so what happens in Spain, the USA, SA or dare I say on a sunny midsummers track day in England? The hotter the ambient air the hotter everything will be below the clamshell.
Stage 2
Having proven it works on its own on a cold day the next step is to fit an internal air temperature sensor that will be used to drive a fan fitted to the back of the new IC. This mod is being fabricated at the moment. The temp sensor will hang in the actual air flow, it will not be sensing the temp of the plating of the outlet tank or the wall of the tubing that external ones sense but the actual temperature of the air as it leaves the IC. The switch will also be "latching" in the sense that once triggered it will stay triggered until the air temp falls below 38’c – in other words it will stay on as long as you need it to.
Matt says this, with the wiring loom, will be ready at the end of this week so I’ll post a further update as soon as I can. After that I reckon the job will be done. In the meantime I've posted some pics on my smugmug gallery (also some of the failed air scoop) so have a look. Matt hopes to have it available for sale pretty soon but I’ll leave that up to him.
I'm pretty confident that this is going to be the definitive soultion to the problem.
Oh and for the cynical – no I’m not on a commission.
Regards
Paul C
Having spent close on a year or more looking into this problem I am pleased to report that I think we now have an answer. I must first make it clear that the guy who developed this, Matt Faulks, (who posts here on Pistonheads) is going to make this a commercial product but as we are 99% there he has agreed that I can make this posting to give you all the heads up. He will formally release the product when he’s happy and when he’s got some documented readings rather than our “put your hand on that and feel how cold it is” assessments but we were both so pleased I managed to persuade him to let me make this post now. I reckon we are 2 weeks away from the dogs danglys. We tested the near final production version on my car on Saturday and the results were nothing short of astonishing. Despite what is being said about fans for the IC we proved today you do not necessarily need fans to get the induction air down to the magic 40'c.
Basicaly there is a two stage process to the solution;
Stage 1
Although we know the airflow over the M12 IC is minimal it is not zero, there is some air flowing but its just not enough to get the standard IC to function. One option is to make “bigger” i.e deeper cored versions of the existing IC. These are generally thicker from front to back. However they don’t work because whatever little extra cooling you get is counterbalanced by the disadvantages of having even more metal to act as a heat sink and even greater volumes of air in the induction tracts.
Rather than “go large” Matt’s solution was to go for a more efficient version of the current IC, to apply science to the problem. This would wring every last drop of cooling ablility from what little air was flowing. We tested it yesterday at Plans Motorsports’ place in Dunsfold. This is a brand new high performance intercooler specifically designed for the M12. I won't go into the technical details but its been designed by Matt, an acknowledged expert in the field, and fabricated to F1 standards. The core is a new super efficient design. The tubes have a greater internal surface area with full width internal vanes and external fins that are computer controlled oven brazed. This means that the external fins get brazed to the core tubes along the entire length of each fin. The fin to tube contact is thus seamless metal to metal and not the usual mechanical gripping you find in most cores. The cores themselves are actually made by people who do rads and coolers for the F1 teams. Anyway I’m sure he’ll fill you in on the details but the bottom line is that the thermal transfer efficiency of this core is orders of magnitude greater than the standard one.
On the bench this new core will improve the temp drop by 20'c or more over the standard one. His design also has smaller end tanks which reduces the overall volume.
It’s designed as a swap out. It took less than an hour to fit, you'll need to pop a few of the rivets in the IC box shrouding to enable you to flex the walls apart, but its nothing beyond a competent Noble owner. Fittings and overall size wise its a direct swap replacement. 4 bolts and 3 circlips and a couple of rivets is all that's involved.
Then we took the car and gave it some sustained blasts around the perimeter of Dunsfold (showing some prospective Midengined sportcars series entrants)
getting it nice and hot under the rear clam. Now my car is down on power at the moment and is only boosting to 0.6 but driving it there was no doubt
that it had a crisper response to the throttle and I could detect no power drop off at all. Each time we came back we lifted the clam and felt the IC
and found that the outlet end was so cold if felt it had been refrigerated.
Unfortunately I'd forgotten my pyro but the temperature difference between the inlet and outlet ends was dramatic. We all reckoned that the outlet side of the tank was at close to ambient temperature. Now in similar conditions the standard IC's outlet temp on my car is a documented 55'C. Everyone
present confirmed that this new IC was far colder to the touch than the standard one was. So with this IC on an M12 you do not need fans or scoops or ducts or anything else. I really was very very impressed.
However we must remember this was on a bloody chilly day so what happens in Spain, the USA, SA or dare I say on a sunny midsummers track day in England? The hotter the ambient air the hotter everything will be below the clamshell.
Stage 2
Having proven it works on its own on a cold day the next step is to fit an internal air temperature sensor that will be used to drive a fan fitted to the back of the new IC. This mod is being fabricated at the moment. The temp sensor will hang in the actual air flow, it will not be sensing the temp of the plating of the outlet tank or the wall of the tubing that external ones sense but the actual temperature of the air as it leaves the IC. The switch will also be "latching" in the sense that once triggered it will stay triggered until the air temp falls below 38’c – in other words it will stay on as long as you need it to.
Matt says this, with the wiring loom, will be ready at the end of this week so I’ll post a further update as soon as I can. After that I reckon the job will be done. In the meantime I've posted some pics on my smugmug gallery (also some of the failed air scoop) so have a look. Matt hopes to have it available for sale pretty soon but I’ll leave that up to him.
I'm pretty confident that this is going to be the definitive soultion to the problem.
Oh and for the cynical – no I’m not on a commission.
Regards
Paul C
gizard said:
This sounds great.
Just Idle curiousity Paul but did you consider having a very short (3 inches maybe) but wide (width of roof) intercooler mounted on the roof ala - RS200 style?
see here:
www.harrys-fordpage.com/RS200%205.jpg
I didn't but to do this would require drastic re-plumbing and re-jigging of the engine bay. A drop in replacement's got to be the way to go.
Regards
Paul C~
Dear All,
My analysis;
If the italian one is 2.5 x larger it has approx 2.5 x as much material and thus weight and the machining costs are bound to be increased and there's the weight of the 4 fans. I don't know how much the italian one will cost.
Alternatively there is the John Noble Motorsports IC upgrade - about which I know little other than the price - £999 fitted.
Matt's soultion is cheaper than the JNM IC and Matt's gets you the fan and the temp sensor as well and is undoubtedly lighter and higher tech - a more subtle and scientific approach. In theory it should improve throttle response and reduce turbo lag - even if in practice you can't notice it.
Either way you've got to pay to upgrade - just choose what to pay for - more alluminium or better technology.
Regards
Paul C
My analysis;
If the italian one is 2.5 x larger it has approx 2.5 x as much material and thus weight and the machining costs are bound to be increased and there's the weight of the 4 fans. I don't know how much the italian one will cost.
Alternatively there is the John Noble Motorsports IC upgrade - about which I know little other than the price - £999 fitted.
Matt's soultion is cheaper than the JNM IC and Matt's gets you the fan and the temp sensor as well and is undoubtedly lighter and higher tech - a more subtle and scientific approach. In theory it should improve throttle response and reduce turbo lag - even if in practice you can't notice it.
Either way you've got to pay to upgrade - just choose what to pay for - more alluminium or better technology.
Regards
Paul C
gizard said:
We seem to have discussed Intercoolers fairly well, now how about trying to make the exhaust system more free flowing
......errr watch this space. Does my car have a load of Janspeed components in the passenger footwell waiting to be welded up? - yes
gizard said:
Plus does anyone know if the pipes from either set of cylinders are of equal length?
Yes, I do, they are of equal length.
Regards
Paul C
gizard said:
[
......errr watch this space. Does my car have a load of Janspeed components in the passenger footwell waiting to be welded up? - yes
Yes, I do, they are of equal length.
Regards
Paul C
Have you got a plan of how to improve things or is your's just enourmous!!! My only concern with this route is the noise but we shall have to see.
No, just high flow cats and boxes on as short a pipework as we can arrange. Aiming for 98 dB.
Paul C
elisek said:
elisek said:
pure bullshit!
Dear Elisek,
I think you need your own list mate, where's the moderator?
Regards
Paul C
i think that is the shortest way to rappresent the situation.
Sorry but i don't know all the english words and i explain better in this way.........maybe you can help me with your perfect italian!
All the solution you are giving are wrong!
maybe you didn't understand our experience!!!!
i want that you save time.........but if you want waist it because you don't have anything better to do.........well don't follow our indications and go ahead with NASA solutions!
>> Edited by elisek on Wednesday 23 February 10:14
Caro Elisek
Tutto che dobbiamo sapere è quanto il vostro Intercooler costa.
Allora possiamo comporre le nostre proprie menti.
E potete smettere di gridare!
Ciao
Paul C
Dear All,
The italian chap, Gianluca (aka EliseK), has sent me photos of his IC solution. Who can help me get them posted up on the thread - I never seem to be able to do it. Contact me direct and I will e-mail them to you. They are 1.7MB. The price for the IC is £980 + VAT.
Regards
Paul C
The italian chap, Gianluca (aka EliseK), has sent me photos of his IC solution. Who can help me get them posted up on the thread - I never seem to be able to do it. Contact me direct and I will e-mail them to you. They are 1.7MB. The price for the IC is £980 + VAT.
Regards
Paul C
I think the observation I would make is that they have made the IC dead upright, deepened (thickened) its core significantly and then covered (i.e obscured) both faces with the fans. The net result is that this must impede what little natural airflow there is. Therefore the fans will have to operate all the time.
Matt's solution is clearly more cerebral, elegant and makes the most of what airflow is there already, its a more efficient solution which we know does not need a fan on a cold day. Its also got to be lighter, both from the weight of the IC itself and thanks to its efficiency the need for only one fan vs four. Its also cheaper.
I think I'll stick with the one I've got.
Regards
Paul C
Matt's solution is clearly more cerebral, elegant and makes the most of what airflow is there already, its a more efficient solution which we know does not need a fan on a cold day. Its also got to be lighter, both from the weight of the IC itself and thanks to its efficiency the need for only one fan vs four. Its also cheaper.
I think I'll stick with the one I've got.
Regards
Paul C
Dear All,
We did some objective testing yesterday at Rockingham. These are the results. We compared the standard IC with Faulks'. Temps measured with the IR pyro gun with clams lifted immediately after returning from a real "hoon" in each car;
Outlet Tank Temp On my car was 19.5 'c min to 21.5 'c max.
Outlet Tank Temp On Standard Car's IC min 39.5 'c and 44.5 'c max.
So the proof is there, yesterday the Faulks IC produced a 20'c greater cooling effect than the standard IC. No other mods at all.
Two other points, because the his IC was so efficient the fan wasn't triggered all day long.
Also note the the max temp on the standard IC was at some point over 44'c even though it was on a bloody cold day. That means that even yesterday, when it was freezing, some of the cars with standard ICs will have had their ECUs robbing them of power as it begins retarding at 40'c.
We also did some data logging and confirmed on the "computed" power curves there was no drop off in power from end of a session to the beginning.
I think the term is - no brainer. The results speak for themselves. This has got to be one of the easiest performance upgrades that will fit all models of M12.
In the past I've refrained from recomending anyone's products but there's no point, if you want to upgrade your M12 GTO/3/3R or M400 go and buy one.
Regards
Paul C
We did some objective testing yesterday at Rockingham. These are the results. We compared the standard IC with Faulks'. Temps measured with the IR pyro gun with clams lifted immediately after returning from a real "hoon" in each car;
Outlet Tank Temp On my car was 19.5 'c min to 21.5 'c max.
Outlet Tank Temp On Standard Car's IC min 39.5 'c and 44.5 'c max.
So the proof is there, yesterday the Faulks IC produced a 20'c greater cooling effect than the standard IC. No other mods at all.
Two other points, because the his IC was so efficient the fan wasn't triggered all day long.
Also note the the max temp on the standard IC was at some point over 44'c even though it was on a bloody cold day. That means that even yesterday, when it was freezing, some of the cars with standard ICs will have had their ECUs robbing them of power as it begins retarding at 40'c.
We also did some data logging and confirmed on the "computed" power curves there was no drop off in power from end of a session to the beginning.
I think the term is - no brainer. The results speak for themselves. This has got to be one of the easiest performance upgrades that will fit all models of M12.
In the past I've refrained from recomending anyone's products but there's no point, if you want to upgrade your M12 GTO/3/3R or M400 go and buy one.
Regards
Paul C
turnbaugh said:
Paul,
What was the outside temperature when you did your test? I am wondering what the IC will do on a 90 degree (F) day here in Texas. Dean T
Not sure, I know it was very cold. Guys did anyone measure the ambient temp? Can we track it from a weather site? Matt might know.
Regards
Paul C
Dear All,
Just a quickie to report that Matt and I did some "ultimate" testing today. Matt's going to get me the final figures but basicaly we took my car to Plans Motorsports test circuit and got it hot. We then plugged in Matts laptop and did realtime live data logging from the ECU. In particular we looked at the inlet manifold air temperature - basicaly the bottom line as far as the IC performance is concerned. We did this with his IC and we then swapped my standard factory IC back in and did it again. The ambient temp was 19-20'c throughout. We did the same mixture of "full on" driving with plenty of full power and full boost and lots of black lines on the surface as well as sitting with the car at tickover to simulate being in a traffic jam. The bottom line was that with Matts IC the temp whilst moving was never over 38'c, no matter what the speed, but rose to 41'c with the car standing still. We think the fan cut in at 41'c.
Doing the same test but with my original factory IC the temp started at 41'c and basically just kept rising. Even doing some 100 mph + runs it got to 54'c when we decided we'd proven the point. At this point it was still rising slowly. I am pretty sure it would have gone on rising even higher had we kept driving but we wanted to stop after the same elapsed time as we'd run the Faulks one.
The point of the IC is to cool the air getting into the engine. We were reading the temp of the air entering the engine from the temp sensor in the inlet manifold that is used by the ECU to manage the engine.
QED Matts' IC works.
The next step is to change the thermostat on the IC to one which cuts in at 38'c rather than the current 41'c but cuts out quicker (i.e. stays on for a shorter time).
Regards
PauL C
>> Edited by paulcundy on Sunday 3rd April 09:26
Just a quickie to report that Matt and I did some "ultimate" testing today. Matt's going to get me the final figures but basicaly we took my car to Plans Motorsports test circuit and got it hot. We then plugged in Matts laptop and did realtime live data logging from the ECU. In particular we looked at the inlet manifold air temperature - basicaly the bottom line as far as the IC performance is concerned. We did this with his IC and we then swapped my standard factory IC back in and did it again. The ambient temp was 19-20'c throughout. We did the same mixture of "full on" driving with plenty of full power and full boost and lots of black lines on the surface as well as sitting with the car at tickover to simulate being in a traffic jam. The bottom line was that with Matts IC the temp whilst moving was never over 38'c, no matter what the speed, but rose to 41'c with the car standing still. We think the fan cut in at 41'c.
Doing the same test but with my original factory IC the temp started at 41'c and basically just kept rising. Even doing some 100 mph + runs it got to 54'c when we decided we'd proven the point. At this point it was still rising slowly. I am pretty sure it would have gone on rising even higher had we kept driving but we wanted to stop after the same elapsed time as we'd run the Faulks one.
The point of the IC is to cool the air getting into the engine. We were reading the temp of the air entering the engine from the temp sensor in the inlet manifold that is used by the ECU to manage the engine.
QED Matts' IC works.
The next step is to change the thermostat on the IC to one which cuts in at 38'c rather than the current 41'c but cuts out quicker (i.e. stays on for a shorter time).
Regards
PauL C
>> Edited by paulcundy on Sunday 3rd April 09:26
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