IC idea, has it been done?

[Brett]

FC\'s have one large oil cooler mounted below the rad, so not practical. I think direct cooling using a stored gas charge is the way forward.

[m1tch]

Apparently for drag racing a good perfomance boost is to spray the intercooler before the run with some of that cold spray that is used for sports injurys, spray that on the intercooler and it will cool the charge more effectivly cause the IC is colder lol

[Ricco_04]

Has anyone submerged a small intercooler in a very cold liquid so it would act like driving on a very cold day. That i supose is on a similar vein as flooding the area around the IC with refrigerant.

Pretty much a chargecooler.  You would then need a rad & pump for that water to be kept cool.

Was thinking about a small nitrous jet hust after the I/C but that wouldn\'t last too long! :spank   Still would cool the charge massively and do wonders for the fueling

[pdtaylor18]

Well as I come from the aircraft world we use several variations of getting any fluid cooled.  The obvious is ram air and used whenever possible but only good at speeds.  We also use fuel cooled oil coolers, fuel will always be cooler but we generally use this to cool gearbox oils.  Air cooled fuel coolers whereby ram air or a \'induced air flow\' is used to cool the fuel and quite simply just ram air.  Ram air is good at speeds and is very simply how the the cars rad and intercooler are cooled.
Could we used fuel to cool........yes we could but it does come with its draw backs as you need high tolerance couplings and more pipework for the flow and return and therefore a dedicated fuel pump but it is certainly something to explore.
As prof has already mentioned thermal efficiency, lagging etc then this area must never be overlooked as something as simple as £20 spent on lagging the downpipe and heat resistant spray will undoubedly give dividends in reducing heat.  vents in the bonnets are not just for ram air to the coolers but they should also induce the flow of air from the engine bay and suck hot air out.
Heat will always rise but in a car you also have a lot of disturbed air so its very very important to fit those under trays as they are there for a reason and directing air is just one of them.
I think the idea of two intercoolers is in theory a good idea but the practicalities of devising control methods might become more complicated and therefore potential to cause problems.  Where you mount the FMIC just does not have to always be at the very front, I know v-mounts have been mentioned but i am toying with the idea to mount the rad and intercooler together, seen it done before and as long as you have ducting from the front bumper, channeling the air, then this maybe an easier way to mount and less pipework.  I am going to use 2 1/2" pipework on mine.
Going back to ducting and an aero engine.  The entire engine is just a formation of con/di ducts that either increase pressure or decrease pressure to get the right velocity.  Remember that if you increase pressure you increase temperature as well.  quite surprised in a standard intercooler setup that the pipework is the same diameter.  I would have thought that going from a pretty much standard 3" Bore cooler and dropping to a 2 1/2" would give you that much needed velocity of air but you would increase the pressure and temp in doing so.  Its important to get the sums right, too many people go for bigger is better but not necessarily the case.  it would be crucial to aim for a given BHP and work out the volume of air needed which would give you your intercooler size and that of the pipework to deliver the air.  Quite hard for the average chap to work out.
Just to add after reading this that you could use fuel to cool the water as well but the last thing you want is the fuel to get too warm and also the risk of the two mixing if you have a failure.  You would also have to be very care on just where and how you use fuel as a cooling fluid due to the risk of fire.

[Nik da Greek]

Occam\'s Razor is a law of logic (though it sounds like it should be a Goth band!) that states basically "Never look for a complicated answer when a simple one will suffice". Mazda kinda lost sight of this from time to time, and we have the rat\'s nest to thank them for!
 
It\'s all very well adding piping and cooling systems and valves and flaps to switch from one I/C to another, but the short version is that you\'re adding more things to go wrong. The basic air to air intercooler (or air to water charge cooler) is a very good compromise for the simplicity that it brings. Even with the idea of a chargecooler, you have to appreciate that you\'re just moving the thermal load to somehwere else in the cars\' systems, not actually removing it. Saving temperature from the charge there means the water cooling system is working harder elsewhere to compensate.
 
Adding pipes of aircon refrigerant all over the place just gives you another system to run and maintain. The effects would be far-reaching; worse fuel economy because you\'re driving another, not very efficient pump, increased residual heat due to other components being shielded from airflow by all the aircon gubbins, added weight from condensers, driers, etc. Nothing comes free with vehicles!
 
Compressed gas, like some drag cars and that have to spray cooling nitrous or CO2 or whatever is a good "free" way of cooling stuff cos the lines are relatively lightweight and narrow and thus easy to run and the system doesn\'t require significant power from the engine to run (just electrical charge to fire the foggers). But the cannister weighs a good deal and, once it\'s emptied there is no way of refilling it from self-carried means (ie from within the car) so it just becomes redundant weight.
 
On an (almost) related topic, one of our drivers once managed to run over a shovel that a track worker had left in the rail bed. It sprang up and pierced the oil-cooling matrix around his train\'s transformer (its shunting 25000 volts down to about 800, it gets HOT!). The resulting flamethrower of super-heated, high-pressure burning oil was a warming thing to behold, very pretty, but also downright scary! Ceratinly makes me think that the less relatively fragile fluid hoses I have in the same engine bay as red-hot turbos, the happier I\'ll be!
 
Phew. sorry, didn\'t mean to waffle on that long. Right, I\'m off for a gin now in the hope some of that ol drivel will make sense then!