Does anyone have any experiance with a Liquid to Air inter?

[charmcity]

I was talking to a buddy of mine and the topic of intercoolers came up. I was wondering if anyone is or has run a Liquid to Air set up in their car or has any pics of one in a Galant. I heard they are better cooling and the piping can be super short, and it would add to the sleeper motief of our cars just wanted to know.


Thanks in advance.

 

[cOmpressor]

A few members here have them and seem to love most stuff about them. Shorter pipes: yes, better cooling: yes, sleeper look: no. You still have a heat transfer core in front to cool the water back down so essentially you have 2 radiators.

 

[jepherz]

You have the option to bring the intake air down to a temperature lower than ambient as well, so they can add power over an air/air.

 

[RedTwo]

Bazeng has one. Look in the members rides.

 

[CarRacer]

I was under the impression water I/C was mainly for drag cars. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/dunno.gif

 

[jepherz]

It's more suited for a drag car because it is harder to combat the heat soaking if running one on, say a road course, but that doesn't mean you can't use it elsewhere.

 

[charmcity]

All that sounds good is there any bad anyone has heard? Im leaning in that direction.

 

[jepherz]

what "bad" are you looking for? They are more expensive and harder to come by in addition to my heat soak comment.

 

[belize1334]

I have one and I really like it. The main problem is that there is no kit available per say. You'll have to fab your own piping, find a place to mount the pump. Find a place to mount the reservoir etc. It's been a struggle to get the system to the point where I know it's always primed (no air bubbles) and I'm still left with a fairly ghetto-fabulous engine bay. If you're willing to throw down a bunch of cash all at once you could get the pieces and then pay to have your pipes all made at once but you're gonna be into it for at least as much money as an ETS kit.

As for the performance. I have a PWR 6x6 barrel and a cobra front heat exchanger (painted black so it doesn't stand out). I use a bosch pump that can be found on ebay (they're OEM for supercharged Fords) and I have a custom(ish) reservoir so that I can add fluid w/o having to disconnect hoses. Thus far the system is more than sufficient for anything I've asked of it. I can pull 20+ psi on my s16g and I can hold 10psi indefinitely in 5th gear climbing passes, both w/ ZERO knock. I'm sure it could handle more but I haven't asked it to. Technically you have to be concerned about the core warming up in the engine bay any time you don't have airflow (i.e. sitting in line at AutoX). My understanding is that a FMIC will give a cooler charge initially but that the added mass of the water acts as a heat "capacitor" and thus makes the temp. more stable.

 

[ercp98]

i am making one out using a syclone intercooler. they are cheap enough to get.
and it a garrett core.

 

[charmcity]

I did see a whole set on ebay for cheaper then just a core. I must say Im torn because I will not be racing that much but I would like a setup that will work the best but at the same time wont kill my budget.

 

[Dialcaliper]

Air to water works pretty well for sucking heat out of the intake, and keeping short tubing. The water takes a lot of heat to increase the temperature, so it stays cool, but ultimately, you have to put the heat somewhere i.e. the extra radiator. That radiator is only as good as the airflow that passes through it, so to match an air-to-air you'd basically have to have a radiator the same size, full of coolant, which is incredibly heavy.

Air-to-water works quite well where heat is in short bursts - ie street cars and drag racing. If the car is pushed hard for a long period, the air-to-air accomplishes the same thing, without being full of water, plus the extra water barrel.

If you want something to stabilize temperatures, look up "parrafin", "phase change" or "fusion" intercoolers. Basically it's an air to water intercooler filled with parrafin wax with no external radiator. It takes advantage of the fact that it takes much more heat to actually melt the parrafin to a liquid than it does to raise the temperature. Basically, depending on the type of wax, it will melt around 100 F - when the intake air reaches that temperature, the wax starts melting, and soaking up heat. The temperature will stay at 100 F until it's completely melted (at which point the air will continue to heat up). Cooling is accomplished by the cool intake air off-boost. Basically it works similarly to using ice in an air-to-water intercooler, except at a temperature higher than ambient. It can be used alone in a lightly boosted application where size and packaging are a concern, or with an air-to-air unit to lessen the effect of heat spikes, or heatsoak of the main intercooler.

If you just breezed by all that, here's a cool article on Autospeed about it

 

[belize1334]

The only caveat to that is that, because the thermal conductivity between water and metal is so much higher than that between air and metal, you can have a much lower surface area of exposed water then exposed air and still get good heat conduction. Thus while you're front heat exchanger must ultimately have the same exposed area for the airflow across it, the actual volume of the object can be lower because the internal surface area (exposed to water) can be much lower. That being said, you're right that the total weight of the system will almost always be higher than that of an air/air system. Still, I think that mine has probably 4 liters of water in it plus the weight of the aluminum heat exchanger and the intercooler itself. Add the pump and the reservoir to that as well as the lines and it all probably comes out to about 30 pounds. That's a bit more than a front-mount setup with pipes and intercooler together but I don't think it's really significant compared to, say, the weight that I dropped when I cut the bumper core, pulled my a/c, and yanked the ABS brick.

 

[curtis]

One thing about water to air you can run them with a air to air as well.

Another thing also that can be done is run a bypass set-up to another tank in the trunk or where ever so if the IC heat soaks flip a solenoid open and another closed and you can have a instant burst of ice water flowing through the lines.

 

[charmcity]

thanks guys thats alot of great information. I guess the i have some options.