custom water to air intercooler

[jerryzx3]

This is something I have been looking into for a while and finally did. I bought a transmission cooler that is 5"x8 7/8" and ran the sprayer for my rear windshield wiper to it and the outlet of the radiator into the cap of the filler neck of the wiper tank. I plan on using it when I race and fill the tank with ice water. When it is in I can put the stock box back on and it will look completely stock except for the hoses. Tell me what you think, good idea or not. I am going to the track next weekend and so I will be able to tell if it does anything. Just thought if anyone else was thinking of doing this, this is my idea of how I did it. Any good ideas would be appreciated too. Thanks for reading

[AndrewBoy]

Hi! Idea is good, but...

1. At high RPM the airflow is very high, and this small radiator cannot cool down the air enough.

2. It's enough to cool down the air temperature to 35-40 degrees (celsius), you feel no differece if the air is cooler.

3. This would be very good for a turbo, but if you have the air in the radiator and water (circulated) in the box.

however it's a nice try! and great job!

[soffiler]

Very interesting idea, nice work on the install too. My first comment is that it looks like it will be a nasty airflow restriction. Whatever you gain with cooler air will be lost by the reduced airflow. Second, you're going to need to flow quite a bit of icewater thru that thing in order to drop the air temperature. The dribble from a WW pump doesn't sound like it'll be enough.

But who am I to judge? I say go for it! Try it and see what happens. Hopefully you have some performance data on your car (pre-installation of this cooler) so you can get a direct comparison of whether you got an improvement or not.

[jerryzx3]

Thanks for the feedback, I do realize that it may not stay cold long enough but it is only for 15 seconds and I can run it before the race to freeze the radiator before the run so It wont take as much water to keep it cold. It could be a restriction but there is a large 2" gap on one side that is going to let alot of air around the radiator. I am going to run at least 2 runs without it and 2 runs with it to see which one works the best. I will repost again when I have more data, again, thanks for the feedback

[awnuts]

If Theres room under the radiator in the box why not throw a cake of dry ice in it? Close the top of the box the radiator is iced.

Awnuts

[SkaAddict]

^

A large cake of dry ice would be very bad, as it would evaporate it would flood the engine with carbon dioxide, and that would be far worse than warm air. You may be into something, however; instead of running ice water through it for a couple of minutes before you could place a dry ice cake on the radiator to chill it before running and then remove it. You could also look into putting dry ice into the windshield wiper fluid resivor to further chill the water (At that point you'd probably want to move to a water/alcohol mix.) IMO this has real potential, you should go do a dyno run with and without it and see it there's any improvement.

[jerryzx3]

I thought about the dry ice thing but also thought about the gas it emits when melting. I don't trust the dyno shop around here but I will be able to tell with a few runs at the track.

[sixty9oz]

Hurry up and let us know how it works. Good job putting that thing in our heads to work. At least the one in yours.

[dgualtie]

good idea let us know if it works i admire your creativity

[jerryzx3]

If it isn't windy I may try it out tomorrow. We have so much dust here and I have to run it without a filter. I will be going to the track with it Saturday for sure, it is Desert Race Wars.