project: water to air intercooler

i want to design a system that works well and is streetable for our cars...first step is to try out a cooler. does anyone here have a good smic lying around and can do a little modification to it for me? i don't have access to fab equipment right now...here's the plan:

fab a casing around the smic, rearrange endtanks so they go straight in one side, straight out the opposite (on the same sides they are stock). weld two coolant inlets to the one "face" (where air normally passes through to cool the intake charge), and two to the other "face". these 2 faces of the intercooler, which are normally exposed to air, will have plates welded to them with a 3/4" space between the plates and the fins. this allows coolant to diffuse evenly. the ends which do not have inlets/outlets will be sealed as well...the whole setup will be mounted flat, so that water runs from the bottom to the top.

if anyone has anything they'd like to "donate" or supply for cheap to me, i'd appreciate it. if this works, i wouldn't be opposed to making these setups for CHEAP if all goes well. also, any suggestions, do's and don'ts, or overall criticism would help.

 

this is kind of what it would look like:

 

I'll be going water to air when I upgrade my turbo, possibly before. I was planning on going for one of the PWR barrel coolers (look at Abel Ibarra's{sp} RX7) but may look at cheaper alternatives too.

 

so are water to air coolers just using the coolant from the radiator or is there a seperate pump for the thing?

im assuming its not comming from the coolant..but im dumb hehee

 

liquid/air coolers use their own system. it consists of a resevoir, pump, and some sort of heat exchanger (oil/tranny cooler, small radiator). the key is to have enough liquid, according to the speed of your pump, to keep cool liquid in the intercooler while at boost, then allow the system to cool the liquid back down while driving normally...on average, one will boost 15-20 seconds at a time, therefore, if your pump moves 10 gallons a minute, you want between 2.5 - 3 gallons in the entire system, including resevoir, exchanger, intercooler, and plumbing. a good combination for fluid is a 50/50 of water and isopropyl alcohol.

 

Here are some pics of the custom setup I have in my supercharged MR2. The intercooler I used is a JDM Subaru Liberty. They can be found for quite cheap at those Subaru tuners. The rest of the setup consists of: 1.) Jabsco Water-Puppy water pump(most used pump for air/water setups probably) 2.) Large heat exchanger front mounted. I am using a 50/50 mix right now. Air/water setups are great for tight setups where a good amount of air flow is difficult to get to the air/air intercooler.

http://midengine210.hypermart.net/intercooler/air2water_b1.jpg
http://midengine210.hypermart.net/intercooler/air2water_b2.jpg
http://midengine210.hypermart.net/intercooler/air_water5.jpg

 

The RS cooler is probably too small for our cars though, as it was off a 2.0T to start with, on an MR2 it would rock of course. Maybe 2 RS coolers strapped together in parallel though..

 

My buddy at work have one exactly like the one in the picture, but its just a little longer. the core is 12x12x3. Its made by Spearco, that sucker look PHAT!

but he wanna too much for it, he (claim), he pay at least 800 bucks for it. he was saying he'll charge me 450 bucks for it, never used, brand new.

 

i think the TEL smic's, when used in this application, can flow as much as 1500 cfm...which is enough for almost any turbo. also, the design of the system has more to do with how well it works more than anything.

 

I don't know if anyone else on this board has an air/water. But I do, I use the largest of the PWR barrell coolers since it has the least amount of pressure drop I've measured in an intercooler. My system uses the Jabsco centri puppy pump with a Yamaha R1 radiator from my old bike so it was free for me but you can get them for under $100 off ebay and they are exactly the right size. You can't fit anything bigger in the area where the stock intercooler sits without cutting. I paid $650 for the barrell and the pump and then another $100 for hose and making the bracket to hold the intercooler in place so I'm into it a total of $750 and if you included the price of the radiator it would be about $830. My setup has the least amount of piping possible, never has outlet temp's over ambient, even when sitting at stop lights. It doesn't heat soak, I repeat IT DOES NOT HEAT SOAK. The heat exchanger has a fan that keeps the coolant temp down at all times. The only downside it could possibly have is weight, I haven't weighed it with fluid included so I don't know what it weighs. But I would be glad to weigh it if someone would weigh there big front mount so we can compare the weights.

 

Russya, which size barrel do you have?

The 6"x6" kit comes with all this for $933.15 from Absolute Radiatior. With 3" inlet/outlets it flows 920cfm.

I think I'm in love

 

russya-

do you have pics of your setup? please post them if you do, i think we'd all be interested. what do you use for a resevior and where is it mounted?

 

[turboflanagan]

I've been lusting over that stupid barrel intercooler for a few months now. Ever since someone posted a pic of one on a TEL. I WILL have one in the near future.

 

I have a 6x10 barrel which is almost too big, I would recommend that if you do it go with a 6x8 or smaller length wise. The 10 inch barrel with the 90 degree elbows welded on barely fits with a non turbo throttle body. It wouldn't fit a turbo throttle body unless you had a custom elbow that didn't bend which is pointless when you can get a non turbo that's 70mm for a little bit better flow and one less gasket to leak. I don't have pics of mine but I do have the ones of a dsm with a setup that's almost identical except my blow off is on the lower elbow and I'm not using silcone couplers. I'm using wiggins clamps. When mine gets back from HPC with my new custom heatshield I'll take pics and post them

 

Here's the pics of that TEL and the radiator I use. Don't buy that kit from Absolute Radiator, it's a ripoff.

I use the overflow bottle from a Pontiac Lemans but I'll be changing that to something custom pretty soon.

 

how streetable is this system?

 

Well with my turbo it actually has better throttle response than stock. And it's perfectly reliable. The Galant is actually my wifes car so I can't do anything to it that makes it finicky. And I've never drag raced it so I haven't even tried using ice water or anything like that in it. I just filled it up with water and a little water wetter and a small amount of coolant and never bothered with it again I've never had a more stable intercooler temp wise.

 

I've got a similar setup that I'm going to put in my galant. Only difference is I'm using a celica all trac water to air intercooler, a sure flow pump, and a radiator out of my old honda cx650 turbo that hit a deer. Trust me, that sucked..getting a deer in the face at 60 mph standing on your front wheel trying to stop really sucks. Flying off your bike and knocking the deer out with your helmet? Priceless..

What I'm going to do though is mount the water cooler inline with the stock fmic, and put the radiator over on the drivers side IN FRONT of the a/c condensor. The Diamante has a super slimline fan that might just fit..

BTW the sure flow pump is only 60 bucks, and I have had one since 1994 running on a different turbo project in a boat, and it hasn't failed yet. They have typical garden hose fittings for inlet/outlet as well, so hmmm, garden hose is cheap enough. You can also run the garden hose to the trunk and have a nice old plastic fuel cell bolted down and filled with ice, so you're running from the radiator, thru the ice water, and back. That's what I had on the boat..of course, it was a volvo penta ford pinto 2.3 motor with the turbo sh*t out of an 86 mustang svo. I took the celica system off because it was just easier to draw cold water from the bottom of the boat by tapping into the water intake for the motor itself. Man would that thing fly. I sure embarrassed a lot of big block boats with that little bayliner capri..

Oh, and of course, the boat's name was..."Boosted to 30"

Everyone thought it was my age..and it was, but was also the boost she was running.

Oh, and you can find the pump in the junkyard for next to nothing.. Just find a junk pickup camper that had a water heater. The sure flow was used in those things exclusively. I got one for free, and paid 20 for the other one..
Dave

 

What's the flow rate on that pump?

 

"fab a casing around the smic, rearrange endtanks so they go straight in one side, straight out the opposite (on the same sides they are stock). weld two coolant inlets to the one "face" (where air normally passes through to cool the intake charge), and two to the other "face". these 2 faces of the intercooler, which are normally exposed to air, will have plates welded to them with a 3/4" space between the plates and the fins. this allows coolant to diffuse evenly. the ends which do not have inlets/outlets will be sealed as well...the whole setup will be mounted flat, so that water runs from the bottom to the top."

You can turn an air/air I/C into an air/water, but I think you have it backwards, unless I miss understood. You want to run the water through the inside if the old I/C, and your air charge needs to go through the core, where the cooling air used to flow, like a heater core.