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

[V6sleeper]

The problem we are seeing with most of the current designs is pressure drop and it's not due to the cooling effect. It's simply restrictive flow due to core design. The engine is swallowing the air faster than it flows through the core. CFM is dictated by displacement and engine speed. We aren't necessarily looking to use the Intercooler to control detonation. Cylinder pressure control, increased octane, or an anti detonant should be used.


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So what would be the best flowing core design for minimal pressure drop?
tube/fin
bar/plate
tube/plate

 

[NY Twin Turbo]

Since my car is completely apart and we have to build a new I/C anyway I will be taking a real hard look at the space available for a great flowing vertical LPD cooler like bison and turbobitt have described.

Try this. You have to do a little cutting but what's the difference if it's a race car.

 

[~JM~]

So does anyone know the flow, pressure drop & cooling specs on the RJC IC-325 FMIC?

 

[bison]

Heres an old pic of the intercooler that procharger was building approx 10 years ago, mocked up on a buddies cutlass. He never got it up and running with the supercharger but it looks like it could move a bit of air...

View attachment 268916

And yes, that trans cooler was only temporary

these types of cores flow very well. With a supercharger pressure drop is again very important and Procharger knew this or they wouldn't have this type of core

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[INEEDAGN]

Im like the rest of the sheep. PTE front mounts went on sale, I happened to have cash at the time and my car already had the cooling system to support it. I have no hard data except boost jumped several PSI over a stock IC and it allows boost levels on straight 91 that are higher than the accepted norm on this forum, only basic tuning with a trans plus/extender setup and its not hyper sensitive to ambient temp (though I do refrain from low 20s boost if its 90+ heat.) It makes my 44 surge badly and I'm gonna have to upgrade turbo/converter one of these days, but i'd buy it again especially for $699 new.

 

[toofastforyou]

So what would be the best flowing core design for minimal pressure drop?
tube/fin
bar/plate
tube/plate

Yeah, I would also like to see a comparison between them, the advantages and drawbacks, etc…and is there one which stands out among the others or are they equivalent?...
Thanks.

P.S: I think mine (Cotton's) shown in post #45 on page 3 is a tube/fin design...

 

[NY Twin Turbo]

What exactly is a "bar and plate" intercooler?… I've seen that a few times but I'm unsure about what it means…

Thanks.

It's the one you have. Look up close and you will see.

The cooling fins for both the inside air and outside air are stacked perpendicular to each other between plates and closed off with extruded aluminum bars. Each forms its own passage because the bars at the ends close off one from the other.

Tube and fin is what DeQuick's intercooler was. These are more like a radiator in construction. The inside air tubes are completely enclosed and have fins in them already. Then they are stacked between fins which allow air to pass around them.

 

[NY Twin Turbo]

Yeah, I would also like to see a comparison between them, the advantages and drawbacks, etc…and is there one which stands out among the others or are they equivalent?...
Thanks.

P.S: I think mine (Cotton's) shown in post #45 on page 3 is a tube/fin design...

YES!!!! You are correct! I went back and checked after I hit send.

 

[toofastforyou]

YES!!!! You are correct! I went back and checked after I hit send.

Thanks Joey for your reply…but between the time I wrote my previous post to now, I had time to check on the web for the main differences between these two types of intercoolers and found that tube/fin design are lighter but a little more "fragile" than the bar/plate design which seem to be heavier but sturdier.
As for which one has the better efficiency, I haven't learned about that yet…
As for my Cotton's unit, it definitely is a tube/fin design.

Claude.

 

[bison]

So what would be the best flowing core design for minimal pressure drop?
tube/fin
bar/plate
tube/plate

For a drag racer or short bursts a properly designed bar and plate or others with the proper turbulator density will likely net the most cooling. Mass plays a large role in cooling itself. The Intercooler is acting as a large heat sink through most of a quarter mile pass. Other types of racers need more real time cooling and have to consider airflow over the core and a bunch of other things. The cost of the cores is a big consideration to a potential seller since a large part of the cost is consumed by the core type. We aren't using cost as one of those limiting factors and are using Bell cores since they are top tier quality and are made in the USA. I'm sure we could source cores overseas for less than 1/5 the price and a decrease in performance. There's a lot of good info about intercoolers here:
http://www.bellintercoolers.com/pages/techFAQ.html#FAQ_18

Plenty of the things I already mentioned above are further covered here along with a bunch of other stuff to consider


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[ravege]

What's the physics here of vertical > horizontal? The longer tanks, more "bars", shorter "bars"?

 

[V6sleeper]

For a drag racer or short bursts a properly designed bar and plate or others with the proper turbulator density will likely net the most cooling. Mass plays a large role in cooling itself. The Intercooler is acting as a large heat sink through most of a quarter mile pass. Other types of racers need more real time cooling and have to consider airflow over the core and a bunch of other things. The cost of the cores is a big consideration to a potential seller since a large part of the cost is consumed by the core type. We aren't using cost as one of those limiting factors and are using Bell cores since they are top tier quality and are made in the USA. I'm sure we could source cores overseas for less than 1/5 the price and a decrease in performance. There's a lot of good info about intercoolers here:
http://www.bellintercoolers.com/pages/techFAQ.html#FAQ_18

Plenty of the things I already mentioned above are further covered here along with a bunch of other stuff to consider


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I don't know if this is a great idea but I run one of these coolers for my trans and was studying the design and thought this probably wouldn't make a half bad intercooler design as far as Flow, heat rejection , pressure drop, but im sure it wouldn't be cheap to make... http://www.earls.co.uk/earls/coolers/tempacure.html

 

[bison]

I don't know if this is a great idea but I run one of these coolers for my trans and was studying the design and thought this probably wouldn't make a half bad intercooler design as far as Flow, heat rejection , pressure drop, but im sure it wouldn't be cheap to make... http://www.earls.co.uk/earls/coolers/tempacure.html

We're not looking at trying to re-engineer cores. Bell has a massive selection of cores and many have achieved excellent results with them


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[Pronto]

Do you plan on a sizing one for the 10 second range?

 

[Mike Licht]

We have used the bell cores with great success, or Maybe just get rid of the intercooler and spray Nitrous and Alky in a single nozzle away from the throttle body so the air has time to cool. I bet that would work really well. Pick a core Bison I will build a test intercooler i have a sheet of .125 1010 Aluminum we can make some tanks with lots of tubing and a welder
Mike

 

[bison]

Do you plan on a sizing one for the 10 second range?

We plan on sizing one that will work well into the 9's with alky/93 or e85 with minimal pressure drop


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[bison]

We have used the bell cores with great success, or Maybe just get rid of the intercooler and spray Nitrous and Alky in a single nozzle away from the throttle body so the air has time to cool. I bet that would work really well. Pick a core Bison I will build a test intercooler i have a sheet of .125 1010 Aluminum we can make some tanks with lots of tubing and a welder
Mike

Just messaged you


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[ijames]

Bison, you haven't started the three pages of discussion about whether it is better to put the h0t air in at the bottom or top? Half kidding, half serious. The bottom tank and core close to the tank will be somewhat blocked by the bumper while the top tank and the rest of the core will get full airflow. My gut says it would be better to put the hot air in at the bottom, but I don't have any data or calculations to back that up and heat transfer was never my strong suit in school. Do you know anyone who has done the experiment? How does Procharger plumb theirs?

 

[fastblackracing]

What's the physics here of vertical > horizontal? The longer tanks, more "bars", shorter "bars"?

Basically on a vertical cooler the end tanks will be on the top and the bottom.....but it is not the tank locations that matters its the fact that this type of setup will have a much wider dimension of shorter length cooling tubes,think rectangle here...so more tubes that are shorter in length ===easier for the air to get through which results in a lower pressure drop......because of having more flow tubes the air can slow down going thru and spend more time in the cooling tube

On a horizontal the tanks will be on the sides and you have less tubes that are longer so getting the same amount of air through it is much harder resulting in a higher pressure drop.....because of the lesser amount of flow tubes the air has to go thru faster to get get the same quantity of through it which drives up the pressure drop numbers and the second demon of this deal is the increased turbine back pressure which since most of us have 2-1 back pressure numbers If you have to raise your compressor pressure 5 # to make up for the pressure drop you just added 10# of exhaust back pressure which kills the performance.

There are horizontal coolers that do a good job....not saying there all bad....you have to have both flow and cooling......its about a balance of the two

At the end of the day you want a low pressure loss intercooler that is still big enough to get good charge air temperature drop without excessive internal volume and trying to keep the weight factor in mind.....Hanging a 50 pound intercooler at the very front of your car will impact weight transfer.....

 

[Pronto]

I could see this turned upside down work with our set up.