Custom intercooler
 

I was thinking about ways to improve my F/I set-up and have an idea I would like to share and ask for you opinions & input.

Do you think a custom made intercooler could be designed to incorporate one or more of the following: oil cooler /cryo /meth

I was thinking of soldered tubing that travels either thru or around the intercooler that would carry each type of fluid separately. My thinking is that such a design would save space and make maximum use of the intercoolers charged air.

Any feedback??

As far as the oil cooler, you would be either over cooling the oil, or heating the charge temp higher than you would want. The ideal temps for intake air, and oil aren't close enough to make this a good idea in my opinion. I could possible see running the oil through the radiator similar to the way manufactures handle the transmission cooling duties, but you always have a potential of leaking internally and not knowing about it until its far too late. I think a proper oil cooler set up with a thermostat is still going to be your best bet here.

I hope you don't mind my input on this but I have a few thoughts on this.

Incorporating some sort of cryo/meth system in the intercooler is very simple and has been done for years. You can simply mount a spray bar and mount it in front of the intercooler. This will chill the intercooler right before you make your run but it won't last very long. A lot of people mount their NOS purge nozzles in front of their intercoolers to get the same effect.

In regards to mounting the oil cooler into the intercooler, I would stay away from trying to do this for a few reasons.

1) As the gentleman above me posted you would be running completely different temperatures in each system. The oil is going to overheat the intercooler and greatly reduce the performance of the intercooler. I think your idea is good and I understand your desire to try something different to improve cooling and airflow to to your coolers in a confined space. Unfortunately I don't think it would be the ideal setup.

2) The charged air coming out of the intercooler crossing over the oil cooler would create some pretty high temperatures. On the flip side the heat being put out by the oil cooler would reduce the performance of the intercooler.

Most modern cars are designed with a cooling system that at some point crosses through or near the engine oiling system as well. This design is supposed to help the both fluids reach and maintain operating temperatures more quickly. It works very well for street purposes but when being pushed hard on the track it can cause issues with overheating. Take for example the Ford GT supercar. It is an incredible car that can run over 200 miles per hour stock and can do 0-60 in nearly 3.0 seconds. But, if you take it to the race track, it will start overheating in about five laps. That car has two issues. 1) limited airflow to the coolers and too many coolers in the front end. 2) it has this same oil/coolant sharing system.

http://d5otzd52uv6zz.cloudfront.net/...0334eb-350.jpghttp://www.streetandcircuit-shop.biz...er-sprayer.jpg

It would be an interesting idea to automatize it to spray when post-cooler air temp reaches a certain level. It would be an anti-heat soak system.

Kyle, would something like this be a lot more effective when it is cooling water, like in your air-to-water system? Its kind of a dumb question because I know water is a much more effective heat exchanger so yes it will, but I don't want to make any assumptions about how the temperature of the water running in the system affects your manifold mounted cooler.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is whether this would be worth the price to develop due to the greater effect it has on an air-to-water system?

Ive seen in other forums with turbo cars that have done this and even just used water to spray and some had it hooked up to only spray on full boost. But I think the best thing to do would be a water/meth kit but dont get the timing adjusted and this would cool the air to allow more fuel and the cars ECU would adjust timing a bit for more power. But by not adjusting timing you dont have to worry about running out of the water/meth mix and hurting your car as timing wasnt adjusted to begin with. In the end it does the same thing, keeps the air cool going in.

^ Actually man, Meth/water injection is used to raise the octanage of the air/fuel mix so it doesnt pre-ignite in the cylinder. Its like runing race fuel... its not to cool the intake charge..

You are correct and we are working on something!

At the end of the day the effectiveness of an air to water intercooler greatly relies on the temperature of the water flowing through it. The cooler you can make that water, the more temperature you will pull out of the air crossing over the heat exchanger.

I never thought about setting up some sort of a temperature probe/trigger system for a sprayer like this...It's very interesting and I'm going to talk with my engineer's about that! Great idea!

You are correct and some O.E. companies even offered this as a standard option. Mitsubishi Evo's came with a little button that you could press to spray water on the intercooler.

Another kickass idea I've always liked was done on the Ford Lightning Concept a while back.. they dubbed it the 'SuperCooler'.. where it would use the A/C system to store up and blast the intercooler with chilled air, resulting in a 50hp bump for 30-45 seconds at a time..

Ford Lightning Concept - Ultimatecarpage.com forums

^ Josh thats pretty cool and would be an alternative to using compressed gas/liquid as the cooling agent. You could technically just cool water using the A/C and then route that to spray all over the cooler. Could use water from the windshield washer reservoir, quick refill after each track session.

Check this out.... cools everything.
http://www.qri.biz/images/CryO2-illustration.jpg

http://www.qri.biz/faqs_cryogenic_intake.html

A lot of people use their windshield washer fluid reservoirs as their meth injection reservoirs. Definitely a possibility.

There was an article in Turbo Magazine years back (probably late 90's) about a dodge truck running a set up like that. The truck was built to run high speeds in the desert for a sultan or something like that. Very complex system but seemed like a cool idea. I think that setup was designed for a constant cooling effect though. I may have to pull the magazine out of my archives and re-read that article.

Okay so i actually dug back and found the magazine ...

Turbo magazine July 1998
Article is "Ramming Speed" by Evan Griffey

Basically the IC system consisted of:

Spearco air/water IC
12 Gallon ice chest (in the bed of the truck)
A/C evaporator from an MR2
dedicated A/C compressor

Charge temp out of the twin T04b (told you this was a while back!) is 250°, with an ambient air temp of 125° (Abudabi dessert)
the system is capable of giving an intake air temp of 59-65°

The big question is does the added strain of the AC compressor, the added weight of the full system and the weight of the 12 gallons of water justify the power added by the intake temp drop.

^ Either way its way too complex and involved to serve our purpose. CO2 is the way to go.

Of course its overly complex, and thats even the simple version of that system, there were fail safe units installed, and other gadgets that i left out of my summery.

Really in my opinion the best thing you can do is run a good sized air to air IC, and if it positioned right a good set of radiator fans (spal is my choice). The better Spal fans will pull enough air to hold a playing card on the front of the IC after pulling air through the radiator, condenser and the 3" IC core. I've had cars that the IC was still cool to the touch after being on the dyno all day in 95°+ ambient temps. Unless you have a full on drag car why keep trying to make things overly complex? and if you do have a drag car you can just spray the IC down between runs anyway.

Oh ok, so does a higher octane mean cooler intake charge? I was under the impression timing was adjusted for colder air that would allow more fuel. But still I think the end result could be the same, more power without having to adjust timing and not having to worry about hurting the engine.

Nah, here's the quick and dirty. The octane rating of say gasoline, whether its 89 or 93 or whatever refers to how easy the fuel is to ignite. The lower that number, the easier it is to ignite.

When you have a car that is tuned for high performance, whether its high compression or boost or even just a lot of stress from driving on the track; that causes the cylinders to get really hot. Hotspots are created at different locations inside the combustion chamber. All that heat can cause the air/fuel mixture that you car burns to ignite prematurely. That is NOT a good thing, it creates a lot of stress on all the components and if done repeatedly will lead to engine failure. This pre-ignition is called pinging, knocking, detonation, etc. Its all the same thing.

So to battle this premature ignition problem, you can make the fuel mixture harder to ignite, that way it wont ignite before it is supposed to (when the sparkplugs fire). That is the purpose of running race fuel with higher octanage and of injecting methanol or water into the mix. It just raises the octanage, making it less likely for premature ignition to occur.

So race gas/meth/water will NOT give you more power, it just allows you to run a bit more boost or squeeze a little bit more performance out of the car. Because you can run more boost (in our case) then you can make more power without knocking. Of course in forced induction applications, that "little boost" can be a few more psi which can mean as much as 50whp+ over regular gasoline.

FYI, the leading cause of detonation is leaning out the air/fuel mixture. When you lean out, you are running more air in the mix than you should be. The more oxygen you have to burn, the more power, the hotter your cylinders get. So when you lean out, chances of knocking increase dramatically. Thats why they say its safer to run on the rich side. (rich = more fuel). So when someone says their AFR is 12. There are 12 parts of air per part of fuel. SO if you say your AFR is 15, then you are running comparatively more air, therefore leaning it out as compared to running the same car at 12.

So no, its not cooler, its just safer. I run 50/50 mix of pump gas and race gas at the track every time to ensure that my car isn't detonating

Thanks, that makes sense, so has anyone with a fully mooded out "Z", ie. CAI, HFC, CBE figured out if we are running too lean yet? I know when I first got the car my tail pipes would get some black junk on them and since Ive gone to my CBE and K&N drop ins, no black junk so Im assuming Im leaned out a bit but hopefully not too much.

Yep, intake and exhaust will lean you out. I had every bolt-on and took it to the dyno to get tuned. It was running a little lean, but nothing to be alarmed about. Now after the tune I have everything smoothed out, no lean spots and the power curve feels completely smooth.


Going too lean makes you lose power too, so you have to get it right at the sweet spot where its safe and it makes as much power as possible.

actually i was going to mention something to stillen about this but forgot about it until now. Most efficient way of using co2 in a water to air setup = tank bubbler. Think stainless co2 bar submerged in the inercooler tank just have to make sure there is enough antifreeze in the mix to keep it from freezing ;)

Edit forgot to mention that this way it is a direct cooling effect from the gas to the liquid instead of having to go through the metal of the cooler, and it contains the cooling effect of the co2 to the water more. I'd insulate the tank, and make it a good bit bigger then the one in the previous photo i saw, to maximize the time after each burst of co2 before the water would heat soak again. You would have to come up with a vented reservoir with a kind of catch can to keep the coolant in but let the co2 out as you would want the gas to flow directly through the water instead of just using an expansion chamber in the tank(think a/c evaporator) for the greatest cooling effect

man as hot as our engines get I might just use that new water to air intercooler by itself they are developing for the SC just to get air temps down, but it would prolly be expensive if they would ever sell it seperately.

RCZ,

I repped you for a great explanation, though I'd like to make one relatively minor correction.

The water/meth does not effect the octane rating of the fuel (also as a side note, the "octane rating" is also not the same as the "octane" of a fuel, which is a specific molecule within the fuel), though it does cut down on premature ignition. The water/meth works by increasing the specific latent heat of the air/fuel mixture, i.e. it cools the mixture. As the mixture heats up during the compression stroke, if the mixture gets too hot it will self-ignite (ping, knock, whatever you want to call it), which is the same method of operation for a diesel engine.

To add to your excellent description, one of the causes of premature ignition (the hotspots you mentioned) are usually caused by carbon deposits on the piston head. As the engine puts on miles, carbon deposits build up, so it behooves people with lead feet to throw in some deposit cleaner every 50-75k miles to keep the buildup level minimal.

^ Excellent, thanks for the correction man. Good to know! I'm learning like everyone else :)

Rep to you as well.

nice explainations :)

That's why I love the Z community!!! Thanks for your response. I have continued to do research on this topic, which is how I got back to this thread.

The ideal temps for intake air, and oil aren't close enough to make this a good idea in my opinion.

I still have alot to learn as I did not know this and had'nt considered it as a factor. Changes my thinking radically!! I will have to rethink my approach.:tup:

Good points!! Guess I still have alot of research to do....lol

These are interesting ideas that I will definately look into. Thanks!

Now that's interesting!

Many TT'd exotics are running something similiar to this type of set-up.

Not to make a segway or derail the thread, but since it's talking about Intercoolers, and very in depth I might add. (My intercooler IQ just shot up 30 points thanks thos this thread lol) I figured this might be the best spot for my questions...

I've seen different SC/TT setups for the 350/370Z on this forum now and have noticed some use a single Intercooler for both -chargers, and some use a seperate intercooler for each side. My questions are:

1. Does this even matter using a seperate Intercooler for each side vs. a single Intercooler?

2. If it does matter, which is better, 1 big intercooler feeding both sides, or 1 seperate one for each SC/TC?

This might offer some insight:
Welcome to the official GReddy USA blog: New X-Large R35 GTR Intercooler Kit

S-Max also produces an intercooler similar to the one with the coils in the front. The S-Max IC have the coils integrated in them.

^^ Wow!!....a buddy of mine showed me that same unit. looks like it would be an interesting idea. FWIW: Third hand info is that it didn't work so well...but to be fair, that was a G35 and set-up is unknown.

not sure if intake charge temps is the same as Intake Air Temps but when i was spraying meth/water in my supercharged cobalt. My IAT2 dropped ALOT by using meth/water injection. I was seeing 18* timing with 140* IAT2 temps, when i put meth/water on i was able to raise the timing to 22* and IAT2 dropped to 130~. Then once i got the TVS Supercharger and took the M62 off and also changed my mix to 75/25 (meth/water) put a bigger nozzle on (7gph). I raised my timing to 25* (max timing the LSJ Ecotech can produce power) and only seen 130~ after 4 runs on the 1/4. So in other words, it does both raise octane level and cool IAT's

Yeah someone corrected me a while ago, the mix is cooler.

This might be unrelated, but is nos even legal? And if it is, is it legal in new jersey?

Snakes, see post #22...

Hell no NOS is not legal in any state that I know of. Even here in WI you can get a huge fine for having the bottle connected to the lines while driving, even if it is empty. I beleive you can transport in most states but have the bottle attached to the lines is a NO-NO.

Ive heard of turbo guys using the water/meth to help keep intake temps down and not even advance timing. It was a way of helping the stock IC not get as heat soaked and lose power. They would just let the ECU do it and this way if they ran out of the mix they wouldnt have to worry about the timing being off as the ECU would adjust it again. Kinda like a different type of IC system that they could get some bennifits out of everyday driving and then tune it for track time quickly and then back again.