intercooler sprayer

[87hottness]

Has anyone ever used the co2 intercooler sprayer on the sock intercooler just saw a kit and was wondering if it actuaalt helped at all thanks for the input

 

[Pronto]

Yes it works great to keep your socks cool. You'll never get sweaty feet! Your wife will not mind when you take off your shoes and you'll save a ton on athete's foot products.

 

[SPOOLFOOL2]

It has been an overwelming opinion here for many years, (if not decades) that spraying co2, NOS, water, etc, over the intercooler will not help performance in any significant amount, especially if your spraying alky injection. However, I can't remember anyone showing any data to prove this one way or the other. The argument that I've heard is that by the time the intercooler and alky get done cooling the air charge, it's already so close to ambient, that the spray would have nothing left to do. I find this hard to believe with co2 or NOS, as they would be hundreds of degrees below freezing. Water has the best qualities for transfering the heat out, but would be illegal to run at the track, and you wouldn't want to get it under your tires. I've also heard argument that alky atomizes better in hot air. This would be another fun test. spray the alky before the IC. I know that it would eventualy corrode the IC, but the data would be cool. One could have the inside of their intercooler hard anodized.

When I get the time to do it, I plan on playing around with a water mist spray bar on my slic, and post the data. I'll need to have one air temp sensor before the intercooler. One sensor just after it, and one sensor in the back of the doghouse after the alky spray. I probably wont find a ton of untapped horse power. But, who knows? I think it would be fun to find out just how much difference in air temps it would make, in a myth-busters sort of way.

If anyone else wants to give it a go, all I ask is that you post data back here.

Happy spooling.

Mike Barnard

 

[charlief1]

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2161&context=icec

 

[Pronto]

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2161&context=icec

Nice, now we can calculate the correct sized CO2 bottle for what size feet we have! Thanks for the info.

 

[JT'sV6]

Doesnt work. If you want to cool the air charge, spray a 30-50 shot or alky. I will tell you from experience, nitrous works great with boost. My car went 11.6 @ 118 mph with stock turbo, 22psi, and 50hp.

 

[1fast6]

Make sure your not dripping water on the track or you'll be the most popular guy at the track....

 

[Jerryl]

The logic in my little mind says:
It works, BUT . . . . not sure it is worth all the trouble, Ass-U-Ming you run pump gas.

Boost makes power, and spraying the IC with water/CO/NOS or whatever, will increase IC efficiency but not allow significant boost increase. It would require a significant amount of cooling to allow significant boost increase. Just think of the massive amount of CO you would need to spray at 20, 40, 60, 80, 120 mph to make a significant difference in air charge temps. I say “CO” because obviously, you would not/could not do it with water.

“If” you ran “supplemental alky injection” or a fuel like E-85, or 100% meth fuel system, or NOS, you would be able to run higher boost level than a “sprayed IC on 93”.

There is a point where there are diminishing returns on charge temp reduction. Heat makes power, and is required to atomize the fuel. (Controlled heat )
That is my theory anyway . . . but I am with Spoolfool2 . . . . . it would be a very neat experiment.

Also, here is some data on the charge temp effect with alky injection on a non-IC set-up, 100F day.
PS: Track temp was closer to 105F

 

[Pronto]

http://www.nhra.com/UserFiles/file/Unleashed/2011 NHRA Rulebook General Regulations Section.pdf
Section 20 page 5.

 

[Nick Micale]

A CO2 spray kit when using a stock intercooler would be a waste of time and $$$ on a GN especially using pump gas, BUT in a race situation it is well worth the $$$ if the rules allow it.

I personally know of one turbo Buick powered race car that had awesome results cooling the front mount IC. It dropped the inlet air temp almost 50 deg. when spraying down the track vs. no spray.

There are a few other turbo cars using spray with similar results.

 

[charlief1]

Nice, now we can calculate the correct sized CO2 bottle for what size feet we have! Thanks for the info.

Make sure to update how you do with it. I figured that some egghead had already done the research on how well it worked but never thought I'd find it in a college paper.:biggrin:

A CO2 spray kit when using a stock intercooler would be a waste of time and $$$ on a GN especially using pump gas, BUT in a race situation it is well worth the $$$ if the rules allow it.

I personally know of one turbo Buick powered race car that had awesome results cooling the front mount IC. It dropped the inlet air temp almost 50 deg. when spraying down the track vs. no spray.

There are a few other turbo cars using spray with similar results.

Thanks for the info Nick. I know that the WRX STI has an intercooler spray set up from the factory so it has to have some basis for it.

 

[SPOOLFOOL2]

A few thoughts.

If we set aside the fact that a water mist over the IC would not be track leagal, and "might" dump enough water under the tires to make the car spin out and crash. Thrill seeking, skydiver, running with scissors, daredevils like my self, would still like to give it a try.

WW2 airplanes and Reno air racers have greatly improved their performance with water spray bars for many years. If you look at most of the fastest planes, it looks like they're farting clouds. This stuff works. The question is, how well would it work in our particular application?

Here's my thought
Get a razors alky setup just for the water. It would be progressive and be activated by boost just like your alky kit. Run the high pressure hose/line to a fuel rail or block. This block would be on top of, or in front of the SLIC. From this block, run six lines. Each line having a 5 psi check valve in it to keep water from siphoning out. Just after each check valve, you'd have a small nozzle that screwed threw the IC shroud. Just like in an up pipe. Nozzles would be a few inchs apart going from left to right. You could even put a check valve in the single high pressure line incase one of the others failed. Data log air temps. Mount video cameras under the car to see how effective your spraying, and if there are any "issues".

Thoughts?

Mike Barnard

 

[Steve]

I don't think you would get near enough performance increase to justify the expense or hassle. I think that because way back in the day(about 90 0r 91) before there were many aftermarket parts for these cars I had an 86 GN with a stock turbo, injectors and intercooler that ran 12.00's very consistantly. I wanted the car to get into the 11's bad so I bought a stock intercooler from a buddy of mine that had been boxed in with aluminum and made what was called then an "ice box". The intercooler fins and rows would be submerged in ice water. It would hold about a gallon and half of ice water. I installed it and took the car to the track and filled it with ice water and got it so cold it had condensation on the outside of the intercooler and ran the car and it picked up about .04 over my stock intercooler. The car went from 12.06 to 12.02! We know that the tubes and fins will transfer more heat submerged in water than they will with a light spray on them and the ice box still had some ice and was cool after the run so the intercooler was no doubt cooler but very little real performance difference. I am sure the IAT's were lower(this was before Direct Scan or any other data logging equipment) but I am not sure how much. I have read some articles with good science behind them that say that an intercooler works more like a heat sink that absorbs the heat and slower disapates it rather than like a true heat exchanger. This seems to be the case because when CAS came out with the V4 intercooler Tony DeQuick claimed the new(at the time)bar and plate intercoolers were going to crush the performance of the stretched stock core intercoolers due to the thier heat exchanging abilities but that really did not prove to be the case.

 

[Pronto]

There was a water cooled up pipe too. Never heard that worked.

 

[T- Type Tim]

I guess the question is will the track let you spray CO2 down the the track? Being in AZ i have though about using something like this. I am quite sure the temp of high pressure Co2 discharged is much colder than ice water. Ive seen that stuff freeze 1/4 " lines in seconds.

 

[Steve]

I guess the question is will the track let you spray CO2 down the the track? Being in AZ i have though about using something like this. I am quite sure the temp of high pressure Co2 discharged is much colder than ice water. Ive seen that stuff freeze 1/4 " lines in seconds.

CO2 is colder but its in a gas form which absorbs much less heat than a liquid. Removing heat from metal is all about contact surface area and the gas spraying some areas of the intercooler is not going to be nearly as efficient as a liquid covering much more surface area. Look at the big hitter turbo race cars that make 2000+hp-they run a air to water intercooler with ice water not any sort of gas. My point was that going from 85 degree air passing thru an intercooler to ~32 degree water which is more effiient at cooling due to being a liquid made very little performance difference and I would be will to bet that 32 degreee water would lower the IAT's more than CO2 can.

 

[T- Type Tim]

Gotcha. I'm probably going to add this to the list of things to do eventually and give it a shot with c02 once i get a good baseline with the car.

 

[Steve]

Gotcha. I'm probably going to add this to the list of things to do eventually and give it a shot with c02 once i get a good baseline with the car.

I think it would be interesting to take a stock intercooler and box it in like the one I had years ago then make a pass with ice water, then remove the ice water and plumb the box with CO2 and make a pass and then make a pass with nothing in the box at all and see the difference. If the intercooler heat sink theory is true like many claim the 1/8th mile performance would not be a lot of different for all three. I think after the 1/8 the small stock intercooler with no cooling media would become heat saturated and begin to lose performance. I think it would be really interesting to this same test with meth injection and without. I bet the meth injection would come close to equalizing all three set ups. A friend of mine has a turbo LSx car that runs 9.0's on E85 and his car has a air to water and with the cooling effects of the E85 his car runs the same if he puts ice in the intercooler tank or if he just leaves the same water in the tank run after run.

 

[marleyskater420]

I was going to do this on my own car until I decided to convert it over to a full methanol car.

For SLIC I can't imagine this wouldn't benefit them somehow. If you already have a nitrous kit lying around, a spraybar is between 80-120$ for a good one. As a matter of fact my buddy has a whole kit that he had on his cavalier years ago that he'd get rid of for 175-200ish (or less).

Anything you can do to cool the IAT's can't hurt. The real question is the cost vs. benefit ratio. I already had a nitrous kit and solenoids, so I just needed a spraybar.

I remember hearing of guys years ago running "ice boxes" around their IC's. They'd basically fabricate up a box that sat around the IC and fill it with dry ice (colder than regular ice) before each run to prevent the IC from getting heat soak and keep the IC cold. Seemed to work, but for the hassle it wouldn't be worth it nowadays with the technology (alky injection,etc) we have now.

If you have a kit already, or can find one cheap, I think it would be worth a shot. A SLIC can only be so efficient, and depending on how much time in-between runs you have, something like an IC spraybar could really be of help. Or for those who run at tracks that have consistently high ambient temps.

 

[Pronto]

Well for those that didn't read the link to the NHRA rule book:
Fuel/Air: Any method of artificially cooling or heating fuel prohibited
(i.e., cool cans, Freon, wet rags, etc.), except as noted in Class
Requirements. Cool cans, wet towels, etc. are permitted in Super
Stock, Stock, Super Comp, Super Gas, Super Street, and E.T.
classes. Wet towels, rags, ice, etc. must be removed before vehicle
leaves staging area. Ambient-temperature air only; cooling or
otherwise changing the conditions of the intake air is prohibited.
Spraying of intake with any artificial spray or coolant prohibited.

So from that I say no water, NOS, CO2 or anything else is allowed to be openly sprayed. I would ask your track officials first if they would allow it but I doubt it. Air/water closed systems are legal and very effective for the big guys.