budget water to air intercooler

[Abomb]

Look at these water to air intercoolers
Air to Water Intercoolers at FROZENBOOST.COM
It looks like a pretty easy install for our cars(86-87). Are these kits anything close to that expensive ATR setup? You could easily add an ice box reservoir and get your intake temps below ambient, and there is less pressure drop than a big front mount. What do you guys think of these?

 

[VadersV6]

Its definitely a good product. Theres a recent issue of 5.0 and super fords, where this renegade guy made his own air to water IC, which replaces the upper plenum lid. Old intake lid comes off, and this new system bolts on. Really cool setup. But it cooled the air to the point the engine ran terrible. There was no fuel atomization....not enough heat in the cylinders to keep it atomized. He added a bunch of timing and gained almost 200hp, but the A/F was still at 9-10:1 and he couldnt get it any leaner. They're too efficient if anything. Only way to get heat back in the cylinders is to crank the timing way up. That radiator they use is way too big and will get in the way of the main radiator...you dont need a heat exchanger that big. You can grab one off of a lightning truck, and that will be plenty big. That 299 dollar one is a great value. Hard to believe they can make money off these things. Votech has an air to water aftercooler, but it uses hot engine coolant to do the job. That sucks.

 

[turbows6]

Looks like it has potential. I'd guess that the water pump and fan that they use on these kits are probably not exactly top quality though. I'd like to see a way to put ice in somewhere, so you could really get things cool at the drag strip though. People use water to air intercoolers on turbo drag cars regularly, and I don't see them having problems with fuel atomization at least on anything with fuel injection.

 

[Steve]

I looked into going to a water/air intercooler also. On a race type of application they are unbeatable when used with ice water. As far as street driving I was unable to find a real clear cut advantage over a good front mount. Water definatley transfers more heat than air but of course on the street you still have to have the air to pull the heat from the heat exhcanger so ambient air becomes a factor just like a front mount. From what I found I think a properly designed system would be every bit as good as a FM on the street but it would likely take quite a bit of trial and error testing to get the right set up as far as total water volume and and how fast it would need to be pumped to get the optimum flow rate to pull the heat from the intercooler and give it enough time to be cooled in the heat exchanger. I may try a water/air in the future because I like to try new things and I enjoy the challenge but I doubt I will be able top the performance of the PTE intercooler I have now on the street but at the track with ice water would equal :biggrin: