Homemade Water-Air Intercooler?

[Freedster]

Hello all!

I've got a racing intercooler out of an RX7 at home that sort of I ended up with. It's about the size of a stock GN intercooler. The metal at the sides, top and bottom of the core has about a 1/4" lip and it struck me that it would be pretty simple to box in the sides on that lip to make a tank to fill it with water. Then I could tap it with fittings for the connections to the pump and external cooler, put a bleed valve on it for getting air out of the system, and I'd be good to go. I'd have to redo the intake hoses so it would all fit, but I think I could get it done pretty cheaply with a welder in the family.

Sorry if I seem like a noob, but has anyone done something like this before? Any thoughts? Any design considerations I have overlooked? Any advice on pumps or liquid mixes? Should I have a larger cooling fluid tank to help avoid heat soak?

Thanks!

- Freed

 

[Freedster]

TTT

 

[bruce]

Originally posted by Freedster


Sorry if I seem like a noob, but has anyone done something like this before? Any thoughts? Any design considerations I have overlooked? ny advice on pumps or liquid mixes? Should I have a larger cooling fluid tank to help avoid heat soak?

Might go over to the www.syty.org site and read up on what the Syclone guys are doing.

 

[Nick Micale]

Originally posted by Freedster
Hello all!

I've got a racing intercooler out of an RX7 at home that sort of I ended up with. It's about the size of a stock GN intercooler. ....

Sorry if I seem like a noob, but has anyone done something like this before? Any thoughts? Any design considerations I have overlooked? Any advice on pumps or liquid mixes? Should I have a larger cooling fluid tank to help avoid heat soak? Thanks!
- Freed

My opinion is to forget it unless you are just building a race car. With just water circulating in there all the time, it would be worse on the street.

Have a GNX here now with a home-made water-to-air stock location I/C that I am getting ready to remove. He was driving on the street with modest boost and blew a head gasket big time. With the "box" around the fins no air obviously can get to it, consequentially almost no reduction in compressed air temp.

Maintance on the water cooled system is required often for it to perform properly.

 

[BLACK6PACK]

One of the fastest cars down here has something similar. He doesn't have a circulating system. He just dumps ice down in it. This is mainly a race car and he has to run pretty low boost on the street.

 

[lrover2]

Nick that intercooler sounds nice. Would it fit it my ride?

 

[Freedster]

Re: Re: Homemade Water-Air Intercooler?

Originally posted by Nick Micale
My opinion is to forget it unless you are just building a race car. With just water circulating in there all the time, it would be worse on the street.

Have a GNX here now with a home-made water-to-air stock location I/C that I am getting ready to remove. He was driving on the street with modest boost and blew a head gasket big time. With the "box" around the fins no air obviously can get to it, consequentially almost no reduction in compressed air temp.

Maintance on the water cooled system is required often for it to perform properly.

So this GNX didn't have a pump and radiator to externally cool the water? No wonder he blew something up.

I appreciate your words of caution as this is my daily driver. If I can't do it safely and reliably, I won't. The whole point of having the thing is to keep air cool, so if you don't adequately cool your water, it would all be counterproductive because it would heat the air instead of cooling it. I plan on running enough flow and cooling to make sure that I am bringing the intake charge close to ambient, which is something practically impossible to do with a stock intercooler (from what I understand). I was thinking of using a water cooling setup similar to some of the racing ones I have seen for Typhoons, and running an antifreeze mix in it just like they do. They never seemed to have many reliability issues, did they?

I agree that you would need maintenance to make sure that it all performed properly, but I can't see it needing much more maintenance than the other existing cooling systems on the car. It's just 2 radiators full of antifreeze with a pump in the middle. If I monitored the temperature of the liquid and the intake temperatures, I think I could pull it off without breaking anything.

As far as racing it goes, I have some other ideas for auxilliary cooling...

- Freed

 

[lrover2]

No it did have a pump on it. He is trying to tell you it was probably heat saturated even in mid 60's.