Intercoolers should be setup to take the air on a little dance through the cooler. Any cooler where the air is setup to just pass straight from inlet to outlet isn't doing much for the cause.
In it's favour at least it's mounted vertically at the front and not horizontally on top of a hot engine.
That's true. If there was something in there to encourage the charge to pass through the part of the cooler which is exposed and not the bit behind the bumper and if the cooler is not simply straight through from one side to the other then it has as much potential as any other cooler.
My personal favorite way to do this is using an air/water unit rather than an air/air unit. Air/water is 4 times more efficient than air/air. Will also stay cool for longer when using the car in heavy traffic.
it also takes a lot longer to cool down than air to air, and adds a fair bit more weight to and you have the complexity of the plumbing for it too, the GRS front mount on the supercharger version only gets arround 4 above ambient so Graham knows what hes doing
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They are pretty resiliant to heatsoak though. Pulled over at the side of the autobahn in my Saab to fix a popped boost hose and felt the pipes comming in and out of the chargecooler and the actual chargecooler itself and the hose comming out were still cool even after hours of driving when the turbo and the manifold were glowing red.
The resistance to heatsoak and the speed at which it can recover from heatsoak are relative to the amount of water you put into the system and the size of the water-radiator and the size of the chargecooler core. It is not simply a case of - oh chargecooler will heatsoak... not in the slightest.
What is certian is that an air/air intercooler will only be fully effective when travelling and air is able to pass through the fins. When not moving the only cooling effect of the air/air intercooler will be splitting the air up and slowing it down as it goes through the cooler... and that won't be much. When sitting in traffic on the road the intercooler will heatsoak. When sitting at the start line on the track the intercooler will heatsoak. In both of these situations the air to water cooler will stay cool.
Assuming you're not scared of some basic plumbing then the air/water cooler is better.... but never as popular as FMIC... which I do accept. It's like VHS v.s. Betamax... the Sony Betamax was a superior system but VHS out-sold it many times over and eventually Sony had to give up and start building VHS machines if they wanted any share of that market.
If you make the air go on a "little dance" as you put it, you may have it cool down more but at a greater expense to boost. You have to have a balance of not losing to much boost, but also reducing temperatures.
Talk is talk though, fact is the intercooler reduced the peak temps by over half compared to the previous one.
Thats a bit of a none arguement really. I've spent enough time on the motorway to know that even with my topmount that i can rest my hand on the outlet horn. Watching my scan guage cruising at 70-100mph even with a top mount its rare the temp goes above 10 degrees above ambient (usually sits at 5/6 in my car now with the motorsport top mount and improved scoop/divertor). Is my manifold glowing red? Hell yes!!
You've also to consider all the extra weight of the pre-rad, piping, pump, water resevoir not to mention all that water.
This is a track car, how long is it going to be sat on a grid for? Plus if its going to be sat still, a chargecooler is going to suffer more from heat soak as the water in the resevoir will get heated from the engine, go through a pre-rad that is not being cooled by air passing through it as its stood still, then go into chargecooler and be heated more. So it will suffer from heat soak and it will take longer for it to recover that an interecooler. The performance when its moving will not make up for the extra weight, assuming its actually going to be better (which i doubt) in the first place.
If a Chargecooler was better, Mark Shead would of asked for one. If a Chargecooler was better Graham would of recommended it and built it instead.
Plus simpler is always better when something is going to get abused. Pulling up to reconnect some water pipe is going to lose you precious time, especially in a race.
Again mentioned earlier about boost vs temp drop and getting the balance, what you suggest would disrupt the air flow to much, plus you don't know whats actually been done on the inlet side to improve the airflow through the whole core. Why not check out the original posting on the original site. There are better educated people over there than me over there who will be able to explain better than I and will no doubt be intrested in your theories/opinions
It will also stay hotter for longer
95% of figures are made up on the spot. Where do you get the fact that Air/Water is 4 times more effiicient than air/air? Not saying its untrue where is this information based or in what application has it been shown?
That front-mount install is well done. Credit where credit's due. Apparently good workmanship. Although would need to see it all in the flesh for total confirmation.
A large front mount will increase lag. Not a huge concern for road cars with small turbos and modern engine management but going back a few years when Garrett T3 was the last word and ignition systems were dissy controlled you would do everything you could to reduce lag elsewhere. The core must be fully pressurised (i.e. the space must be filled and up to pressure) before the intake manifold will start to pressurise. Not a huge concern but obviously the larger the core the more significiant this issue becomes. So core must be the right size and not simply as big as will fit.
My first chargecooler implementation on my Saab uses a radiator from the original Austin MINI for cooling the water (this is pretty large for just this job by itself) and that has a Davies Craig radiator fan on the back of it. So even when standing still the chargecooler is working. If it was ever close to heatsoak then it will be recovering all the time.
I tend to find when you're at the track you will be waiting for the previous race to end before you are allowed out on track. They keep you waiting on the grid for as long as 15 minutes sometimes. Some people switch off while waiting. Depends on how hot the weather is. Personally I like to try and maintain running temperature so the car is ready when the race starts. Sometimes I switch off, sometimes I leave it running. The worst thing is if you can't get the car started when it's time to go.
The intake tract can be shorter with a chargecooler, although depends on the package as some turbo installations are built from the ground up to take a front-mount intercooler so the pipework remains short anyway.
Dunno if that FMIC in the pic is bar & plate or the other type?
It is an absolute fact that a cooler will cool the charge more efficiently if it is made to wait inside the cooler while the heat is lost. A perfectly streamlined cooler with the intake and exit at the same point on either end and nothing to help the charge disperse inside will be almost completely useless. I think you mentioned earlier Damo... it's the ballance you need to get right. If there is too much restriction then that will cause a dramatic drop in boost pressure and the boost pressure will need to be raised to compensate for losses in the intercooler. The effect of that will be to generate more heat as the turbo will be working harder to achieve the same result.
To be fair, I was just picking a fight in the beginning. For all I know that intercooler in the pic might be very well designed, but you can't see the full story from the outside, you have to know what's going on inside as well. You also have to know how well it works with the setup and if it is apporpriately proportioned ect, ect...
RE: air/water being x4 four more efficient that air/air... as you challanged this point I though I'd look it up just to check. Corky Bell's book on turbocharging reckons in theory air/aluminum v.s. water/aluminum as a core design is potentially 14 times more efficient. My initial quote of x4 more efficient was a pretty serious understatment. The book does explain that the maximum 14-times greater efficiency between the two technologies is in theory and to achieve this in practice you would need everything to be totally perfect so in reality perhaps you could settle on 5 to 10 times more efficient than an air/air cooler. You would over-size the cooler on purpose to protect against heat soak. But really, if you have a sensible ammount of coolant in the system, a reasonable water pump, a fan and a good size radiator then it will eaisly out-perform an air/air cooler of the same size. Even if the air/air cooler is a lot bigger it will still be beaten by the air/water unit. There is a always a limit to the size of an air/air front mount so at some stage the air/water unit will be able to provide more cooling due to the extra efficiency.
Packaging, complexity, cost, ect, ect... are all considerations.
its well known fact that air/water is far more efficient at cooling than air/air, even Graham says this... That said its the argument of weight and complexity. On the MINI a finley balanced car weight wise (a lot at the front) you could do with avoiding adding more.
The proof will be in the pudding...eg the temp figures over previous (its scored on that already) and track time and survival (Lee will test this out to the max as i've seen how he treats the car and will be blunt if he finds it lacking....which i doubt he will)
This is the most unprofessional bit of site management I have seen since I was banned from a certain other site...at least they had the excuse that they were enthusiasts who had strong views and not professionals paid to keep thier cool!
If you can afford to have a smaller core and less pipework running to the front of the car (have you felt the weight of Samco hoses!) and the core can be mounted further back in the engine bay then you can minimise the extra weight added and its effect on weight distribution. The air/water setup might be a bit heavier but not a lot heavier.
If you are only ever using the car on the track and the engine is in the front then a well sized air/air cooler mounted at the front would most likely be the superior solution. But if using on the road or if the engine is mounted in the rear of the car then there is a lot to be said for air/water setup.
If the combination of parts you chose for your air/water installation ended up being heavier than an air/air installation with the same cooling capacity this would not take away the other benefits of a air/water setup... however, notice all the 'if's' and 'but's' in that statement. You'd need to sit down and do the maths to see what the relatives sizes should be.
err... Whatever... since when has a technical discussion been about frequency of visits to doctors and stage performances? I guess posting on a forum is a bit like being on stage as you open yourself up to abuse from anywhere in the same way as if you were being heckled by the public during a stage performance. You're like the scruffy little brick-layer standing up at the front near the stage with a copy of 'The Daily Sport' sticking out your back pocket.... standing there shouting 'rubbish, mate...' 'eerrr, you're rubbish...' 'eerrr'... 'eerrr'... 'rubbish mate'... I honestly couldn't give a hoot what you think about my state of mental well-being. If you've got something technical to say then I might have an opinion on that.
To be fair to 2Much, you started your response to this thread by slating the work on his car and in your own words...
...so don't be surprised if he responds in the same manner you started off in.
As for your technical responses, I believe Graham hasn't bothered to respond to you due to the manner that you started off in. The fact is, when it comes to colling solutions for forced induction cars, you trying to teach him to suck eggs.
Until you make something better yourself for this application, I think you should refrain from calling something rubbish (In other words Proof Or Shut Up!) as you have clearly gained no respect from anyone in this thread despite your technical knowledge.
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