Another Charge cooler install

[Pointman]

Cheers for the info Fro, I think I will have to wait until after my house is sold before I buy one  

(Spent too much already on nice things for the car)

[fro]

you have a seperate radiator for the charge cooler (it\'s a lot smaller than the main rad). On mine, this is mounted in front of the main radiator.
The water is pulled from this radiator, into the charge cooler by a seperate pump. The air from the turbos runs through the charge cooler in pipes which are cooled by the water.
It\'s just like a normal intercooler in a big water tank
Cheers
Rob

This may be a stupid question, but how does a charge cooler work? Does it cool the intake air temp by using the water from the engine which is cooled in the normal way by the rad. If so how does it differ from an intercooler?

Thanks
Ash

[chrisBoid]

It has it\'s own water system, cooled by a small water to air radiator and pumped around it\'s system with an additional electric pump.

[Sy.]

what temps do you get at the inlet air ?

[John Yorke]

Take normal motorway crusing in the summer expect 35ish or + 10c above ambient, on sustained full boost 45ish [dependant on what boost you are running, the numbers quoted are for twins running 1bar] These are only a rough guide and there are loads of factors to be taken into consideration.

The biggest plus is the rad stays in stock position and therefore gets optimum cooling, you reduce the inlet tract and it gives you the chance to sort out a propper cold intake system :guinness.

To sort it completely look at WI [cheapest you can find] for those hi- booooost moments and watch your inlets temps drop to 19\'s  

[fro]

yup that sounds like the sort of temps I\'m seeing.. main water temps are solid as a rock compared with my fmic install

[fro]

this pic shows the re-routed water inlet. The original inlet pipe was very prone to air locks!
The clear pipe\'s been replaced now all the air locks have been diagnosed. At one point, most of it was plumbed with clear hose which was very useful
There\'s now an air bleed point on the cooler itself though this will be replaced by a small outlet to be connected to the filler point (so the system self-bleeds)

[Warthog]

What you may well not know though folks is the temp drop before and after the Charge Cooler is 80+ deg\'s and with an intercooler you will loose 0.3-0.5 bar boost, whereas with a Charge Cooler you will only loose a maximum of 0.1 bar. Now when you put that together with 1. it\'s low cost 2. freeing up space 3. very much lower engine water temps 4. Intake Temps and 5. Low power loss. You have a good system. The only reason that the F1 Teams stopped using it was the weight issue of the water. But I for one feel that in our case that little bit of weight gain is nothing to the bonus points. Anyway HTH. :3gears-lh  :yes

[davegttph1]

This Charge cooler looks home made.... Is there a ready made kit for it? what sort of damage do they expect from it?

[Warthog]

FRO-- Like the idea of the self bleed, keep up the good work and keep us posted. :3gears-lh