Horizontal mount intercooler

[clean86]

Has anyone ever seen one for the TR's, I have seen them on other cars but not ours. It sure would be nice to get the flow and cooling of a BIG intercooler, without the cooling issues.

 

[TurboDave]

Mount them horizontally you then loose the air flow through them

 

[GNVAIR]

I think he is talking about how many of the Mustang and F body guys mount their intercoolers. They seem to be pretty efficent that way, but their reason for doing so is because they lack space in front of the radiator that the Buicks have.

 

[clean86]

I'm here in AZ were owning a front mount and driving your car don't mix.I know lot's of people who have had horizontaly mounted coolers that worked very well. Just woundering if anyone had seen one on a TR. THX

 

[LinearX]

Mount them horizontally you then loose the air flow through them

I've got to agree with Dave. I've got a friend with a 94 Firebird sporting a Procharged LT-4. He's got his intercooler mounted horizontally and his inlet temperatures measured at the throttle body peg the graphs on his DFI (I think the graph maxes at 300°, but I'm not 100% sure at this moment). The kicker is that the temperature gets that high about 3-4 seconds in to a 10 second run, and it never gets any lower as he's moving down the track when airflow should be increasing across the intercooler and helping with that.

I'd say odds are that mouting on horizontally is going to be marginally better than a stock location. Unfortunately, hot weather and front mounts don't play all the nice together from what I read on here.

 

[TurboDave]

Originally posted by clean86
I'm here in AZ were owning a front mount and driving your car don't mix.I know lot's of people who have had horizontaly mounted coolers that worked very well. Just woundering if anyone had seen one on a TR. THX

I've always wondered what that meant ("that worked very well").
Care to expound on that? What were the inlet temps compared to a vertical mount in the same car??
Whether it worked well or not is totally subjective. My guess is that it is only marginally better than no intercooler at all, something we have lot's of in the Turbo Buick comunity.

Sorry, can't buy the "it worked well" speculation.
Tell ya what, mount your radiator horizontally and let me know what happens to your cooling system efficiencies.

That's why radiators and intercoolers work best with a strong flow of air across the fins. HEAT TRANSFER.

 

[clean86]

The friends that are using them run turbo mustangs, Turbotechnologies makes there street kit for mustangs with a 60-1 turbo and a horizontal mount intercooler with a scoop,[like ours] to move air through the intercooler. I am not arguing that it is better or worse, just woundering if anyone had seen one on our cars. My friends using them run low 10's high 9's so they can't be all that bad. I have a stock cooler with dutt neck , thinking that the little fan can't do much and it is in the engine bay heat soaking like crazy, and getting air from the scoop I thought that more core area better flow and same type scoop has to be better than what I have.