Liquid charge cooling vs Air Intercooler

[zeppelin101]

It\'s all very well throwing more water at it to avoid the heat soak problem but 1 litre of water weighs 1kg. With a solid charge cooler system that will take sustained abuse around a race track you are better off going with an air-to-air system for weight purposes.

For drag racing there is no contest - the charge cooler wins every time.

[leeroy_25]

Blimey.. That is quite some replies!
I think it has backed up my suspicisions. For my road set-up a Air-Air cooler should do the job. I was also considering how a water cooled system would work over a prolonged period due to heat soak of the water making for less efficient cooling. Drag use and race use I can see the worth for sure. Has anyone connected an aircon system to the charge cooler to get below ambient temps? I saw a post where some guy was going to try it and various other things. Not sure where.
So if I am going for the Air-air set-up what are the thoughts on the option I am looking at running. I want to try and improve on the efficiency by not running a v-mount of front mount and wanted to try something different! Just unsure as to whether I will create lag issues of other airflow problems with the twin cooler set-up.
They would be in series with 2.5" pipework constant throughout. The coolers will be based on MR2 sidemounts modified with suitable pipework.

Thoughts please!

Grant that charge cooler picture is great.. Is that your set-up with Geff\'s cooler? It looks huge!

Thank you
Lee

[Grant Monkhouse]

Yeh that\'s my setup, have had to alter the whole pipe work to fit it.

[leeroy_25]

Not surprised.. No danger of that getting even remotely warm air in the engine I reckon! If I had a spare engine bay it might be the way forward! one down side to the 20B and big turbo.. They take up too much bloody room!

[Grant Monkhouse]

Chop fire wall and move the engine waaaayyy back

[Grant Monkhouse]

Oh, my turbo isn\'t small:D

[Grizzly]

From speaking with a few tuners/drivers

Charge coolers are great if you are doing short bursts of power runs such as drag racing or short hill climb, the water has fantastic heat absorption properties when it is cold.
The long term use of them however is where they reach their limit. The water heats up and even with a huge radiator they will never drop the temp down below what a air to air cooler can in a reasonable amount of time.

This is why you see big charge coolers on drag cars, as they load them with ice or even liquid co2 to increase their efficiency. Personally with all the additional aggravation of pipework,additional radiator and pump why not just use a decent made intercooler core.

Kimi has a HKS v-mount on her car and air temps on cruise are seriously low. During a recent mapping session they never went above 8*c even under 4 power runs.

+1

I have never seen a V-Mount or FMIC with a simple small jet post turbo WI system struggle coping with air temps, CC seems allot of agro for little gain?

[Grant Monkhouse]

Yeh it is. If I had an FD for driving around the street I would no shadow of a doubt have a vmount. With WI.

With a cc setup in the correct way and working properly, there is nothing to say that it won\'t be as good, if not better than a normal air to air cooler.

I bought mine for a great price, I wouldn\'t have bought one brand new as they are very expensive, the cooler alone would have cost me more than what I paid for the complete set up I have.

From the cooler I see in drag cars they actually run the ice cooler, it is essentially the same size as mine but with a box welded on top with a breather for the dry ice vapour. If I was running a full drag car turbo monster I would use one of those for sure, or just use methanol and no cooler........

[Will66]

Air to air is lighter and simpler and will probably be more effective than a charge cooler in hot conditions, less susceptible to heat soak etc.  For drag racing a charge cooler will probably work better since you can the charge temperature down with out having airflow through in the car, particularly if you have an ice-box or similar.

[marf]

Water Air

[fil_auto]

Water Air

:Giggle :wiggle :mmmm :Thumbsup!

[Grant Monkhouse]

Hahahahaha

[Grizzly]

Every one seems hung up on air inlet temps, you are not going to see much gain between 18 deg and 10deg? the WI makes a huge difference and not to the Air temp but to the EGT (much more important) the air temp makes FA difference to this.

At the end of the day air-air is fool proof and low maintenance plus makes a perfect road/track set up

water-air is much more complex and you run the risk of leaks etc then you are effectively running with no ic plus adding weight.

I see why you might run one for a Drag car, as you say you could mess about with it and put Ice in etc but you can simply spray a CO2 fire extinguisher at the air-air ic and turn it to a block of ice if you wanted to on a drag run so no gain there.

I can see the IC pipe length coming up in a minute but modern Turbo\'s spool and the Air speed in the Inlet run will help make little to no difference in Response and why would you need fast response on a Drag car

IMHO

[Grant Monkhouse]

not fair you guys are picking in me :

[marf]

Helluva lot of confirmation bias in this thread and not much empirical data. That\'s all I\'ll say.