What intercooler are you running and for what reasons have you made this selection?

[Pronto]

I remember that thread, and the pictures (now removed) of the "U" shaped pipe he fabricated, going from the turbo compressor to the throttle body. Many people's reaction at the time was, "Hey! you can't to that".

I miss Bruce. He, and threads like this are important to keeping us thinking outside the box and moving forward.

I found an article on the .org site that showed his experiment. He used a 7th injector spraying gasoline. We have updated that with methanol today but his idea of chemical cooling is still valid.

 

[fastblackracing]

I'm a little confused about the pressure drop. Isn't the air cooling causing the pressure drop, which would indicate a well working intercooler? Wouldn't a lower pressure drop mean less dense air?

The pressure drop that is being pursued in this thread is the basically caused by the friction of the air going thru the innercooler core.....you start out at say 30# on the inlet and due to the excessive resistance of the core you end up with say 25# on the outlet......same thing as a voltage drop on your fuel pump wiring circuit by either to big of a load or under size wire that resists the flow of amperage......how much power do you think a boost loss of 5 pounds is? It is power that is their for taking if you can get it thru a better design cooler.....The turbo is allready making the boost....you just dont get all of it.

 

[bison]

I'm a little confused about the pressure drop. Isn't the air cooling causing the pressure drop, which would indicate a well working intercooler? Wouldn't a lower pressure drop mean less dense air?

A lower pressure drop at the same drive pressure will make more power if the discharge temp is the same or close to the same. There is always a slight pressure drop from the cooling and the pass itself since the air is being flowed through a bunch of tubing. Based on the data I've seen and the amount of space a g body has there should be less than 2psi drop for maximum potential no matter what the performance level is. It's easy to make a restrictive Intercooler that has great heat rejection. It's also easy to make one that has low pressure drop and good heat rejection. Most of the Buick racing community is stuck in the dark ages as far as Intercooler design and what they should be doing to extract performance. For some reason the community likes to talk about how much power they make at low boost and how heavy their cars are. These same people either haven't maximized their combo for fear of breakage or can't because they have inadequate fuel systems or some other lame excuse that they'd rather post on the Internet about instead of going out and figuring something out. Maybe they should put their car on a diet and free up the restrictive areas and let the engine eat and post about it after it's been done. There is a hell of a lot more performance to be had in 90% of the cars and many of them have no clue if their timing is accurate or even how the mass flow/cylinder pressure relationship works yet they are afraid to turn the boost up. Once the car is leaving properly and is safe for full passes it's time to turn it up. Good heads, roller cam, larger than 62mm turbo, front mount, steel crank/rods/stroker, etc is screaming mid 9's. That's where they should be running.


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[bison]

Because of this thread I WILL give that a shot, E85 main fuel and alkyl injection.

You should maximize the cars potential with just the e85 first. Then maybe consider a small amount of methanol just to see if it picks up. My guess is that with no other changes you will pick up next to nothing for power and will likely aggravate distribution on an all on e85 application. Be sure to log egt if you're dumpling in a lot of methanol wet flow style.


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[gunzandgearz]

Pretty interesting thread

 

[gunzandgearz]

Just curious has anybody on here gotten less than 1%pressure drop from compressor outlet to manifold as this would be a greatly efficient system and totally achievable, just not sure of whats out there for turbo buick crowd. Just got my engine back in my car with some new mods and slic precision cooler but getting ready for stout engine for car and will be performing some testing on this stuff myself and hopefully can be of some help on this exact scenario.

 

[NY Twin Turbo]

Please, guys. Don't be offended by what I'm about to say. I understand your intentions are good and you want to create a product that sets the bar a bit higher. As a group we are all thinkers. We need to continue doing this for our own little Buick world.

But for who exactly? Just the guys running in the sub-10's down to 8.50's with alky? How many of us does this include? 100 maybe 200 in the country? Even if it's a thousand, at this level most guys have developed there own little special theories and combinations to get there. And even more importantly.....everyone in this performance range already has bought the intercooler that got them there!

You know? I can't help to wonder if anyone outside a small band of Buick guys will really want to give up their already purchased and expensive big front mount for a less thermoconductive efficient unit. In exchange for what? An additional few 10ths? The answer.......Maybe. But not very many Buick guys I know. And just like you guys, I happen to know quite a few as well.

This leads me back to one of the few crazy suggestions I through out in a post earlier. Forget the intercooler. Build a bypass kit. Triggered by whatever. Either manual adjusted before a run or by temps, pressure, alky trigger. It may even lead to the development of the right intercooler you looking for.. You may be able to use it as a testing device. Manual butterfly valve or something to control back pressure through th IC vs. inlet air temp. It would be tunable and not constant. You could read your exhaust vs. turbo outlet vs. intake pressures. But most importantly you get to keep your intercooler.

In the Hot Air section a while back, I argued that an intercooler might be near useless on a car like mine during a 9 second run. And if I was building a race only car it wouldn't have one at all. Take Geno's car for instance. We have all seen it, haven't we? Seems to be working out for him. But that may not be enough to convince guys who drive 9 second cars on the street. Instead an option to use or not use the IC might be better.

Either way, I'll stick to what I have.

 

[SPOOLFOOL2]

It would be really cool to see a new IC come out of this thread. However, IMHO, If all we get is for people to get off their asses and we gain some well needed data, this will still be the most important IC thread we've had here in many years.

 

[turbobitt]

It would be really cool to see a new IC come out of this thread. However, IMHO, If all we get is for people to get off their asses and we gain some well needed data, this will still be the most important IC thread we've had here in many years.

I'm diving into a brand new intercooler concept within the next few weeks and the tank material is already on order. Will be a while before we get any A/B data against my horizontal flow V1 and possibly the other design I already posted depending on What Bison wants to do.
AG.

 

[johnplogii]

I for one will definitely be changing intercoolers if it's worth a tenth. 2 or 3 tenths would be astounding! I think the idea here is improvements for those of us who are close to the limits of what we are working with, including class limited turbo sizes.

 

[johnplogii]

I tried an RJC IC475 monster intercooler over my precision front mount last year and saw 50 degree lower intake air temps, but no performance difference at all. Wishing I would have logged hot boost pressure to see the difference in pressure drop.

 

[vacuum 6]

What newer core technologies are out there? I thought there's two main designs...stuffed or extruded tubes.

I believe the fin's (between the tubes) pitch and height have been already optimized.

 

[Pronto]

I tried an RJC IC475 monster intercooler over my precision front mount last year and saw 50 degree lower intake air temps, but no performance difference at all. Wishing I would have logged hot boost pressure to see the difference in pressure drop.

That is very interesting about the temps.

 

[gunzandgearz]

Almost doesn't make any sense what were the ambient temp differences between the two runs and was it under same boost?

 

[gunzandgearz]

Sounds like the adiabatic efficiency of the rjc was way better which is always what all the engineers are always trying to achieve, doesn't make sense why it didn't run quicker everything else being equal.

 

[johnplogii]

I don't have the exact numbers handy right now but the density altitude was very close. There were more than two runs, I have ran the precision front mount since 2005, and I used the RJC unit all week in bowling Green, then for a couple weeks after. The RJC intercooler is a very nice piece but was 27 lbs heavier. My opinion is that I had a greater pressure drop with the RJC, causing higher exhaust back pressure at the same intake boost level, thus cancelling out any extra power to be had from the lower intake temps.

 

[johnplogii]

Almost doesn't make any sense what were the ambient temp differences between the two runs and was it under same boost?

It makes sense if you run as much boost as you can. There comes a point with the 3 bolt housings where more boost takes so much more drive pressure that it doesn't make more power.

 

[gunzandgearz]

Yep I can see that if your at your limit ex. side, but that's some good info because if temps were that much better with that cooler and same intake pressure it would improve and be a good gain. It sucks though that its 27 lbs heavier because adding weight is the same as taking away horsepower.

 

[bison]

Please, guys. Don't be offended by what I'm about to say. I understand your intentions are good and you want to create a product that sets the bar a bit higher. As a group we are all thinkers. We need to continue doing this for our own little Buick world.

But for who exactly? Just the guys running in the sub-10's down to 8.50's with alky? How many of us does this include? 100 maybe 200 in the country? Even if it's a thousand, at this level most guys have developed there own little special theories and combinations to get there. And even more importantly.....everyone in this performance range already has bought the intercooler that got them there!

You know? I can't help to wonder if anyone outside a small band of Buick guys will really want to give up their already purchased and expensive big front mount for a less thermoconductive efficient unit. In exchange for what? An additional few 10ths? The answer.......Maybe. But not very many Buick guys I know. And just like you guys, I happen to know quite a few as well.

This leads me back to one of the few crazy suggestions I through out in a post earlier. Forget the intercooler. Build a bypass kit. Triggered by whatever. Either manual adjusted before a run or by temps, pressure, alky trigger. It may even lead to the development of the right intercooler you looking for.. You may be able to use it as a testing device. Manual butterfly valve or something to control back pressure through th IC vs. inlet air temp. It would be tunable and not constant. You could read your exhaust vs. turbo outlet vs. intake pressures. But most importantly you get to keep your intercooler.

In the Hot Air section a while back, I argued that an intercooler might be near useless on a car like mine during a 9 second run. And if I was building a race only car it wouldn't have one at all. Take Geno's car for instance. We have all seen it, haven't we? Seems to be working out for him. But that may not be enough to convince guys who drive 9 second cars on the street. Instead an option to use or not use the IC might be better.

Either way, I'll stick to what I have.

Who said its limited to this community? Plenty of guys run turbocharged v8 engines in g bodies and want air/air intercoolers. We don't really care if there are zero interested in it and I can tell you that there are many interested in it. We are doing it because we see room for improvement on our own cars based on actual data. We're not forgetting the intercooler we know the benefit of having one. You can bypass yours and report back with the data.


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[Steve]

Almost doesn't make any sense what were the ambient temp differences between the two runs and was it under same boost?

My combo is not nearly as maxed out as John's car is but I had similar results years ago when I switched from race gas to pump gas/Alky. I had a very basic mid 10 second T-Type that I ran on race gas. It had home ported irons, 206/206 flat tappet, stock MAF, stock unported intake, stock TB, TE-45a and a CAS V2 and the car ran a best of 10.43 @ 129. I felt like I had the car pretty well maxed out for the parts I had. My IAT's were running about 50-60 degrees over ambient most runs. I switched to methanol injection and saw a about a 50 degree reduction in IAT's and the car never picked up any power. I ran alky with pump gas and alky with race gas but never saw any performance gain. I was determined I didn't have it tuned correctly so switched from the stock ECM I had always ran to a FAST and still no perfromance gain with IAT reduction. The fastest pass the car ever made was on race gas without alky and the IAT on that run was nearly 70 degrees over ambient.