Air to water cooler...cooler.

[Tacoclaw]

Alrighty, I'm getting ready to add an air-to-water intercooler to my truck.


This is the lucky fellow here
http://www.siliconeintakes.com/product_ ... b781154383

My plan is to run it straight off my turbo and just 90* around behind my compressor straight into my intake.

My question is this, I'm putting another radiator in front of my current Dodge radiator. I've got some rough measurements off the front of my truck and managed to cobble up this MS Paint masterpiece.



It will be a 50/50ish mix of water/antifreeze in the winter, but probably just water in the summer.

My question is, is this overkill? I'm not going air-to air since I refuse to cut up my 90 grill. With no transmission cooler, and no AC condensor, I have 3.5 inches from radiator to grill, so it's plenty of room for a single core radiator. I've got one off an old 4 cylinder mustang, but it's a bit too tall and the outputs are in bad spots.

I could easily cut that width in half, if it's not needed. My truck is just a 90 non-intercooled with stock injectors, pump tweaks, piston LP, 62/65 turbo, and the ability to peg it's 1500* pyro in a 0-80 run empty. I may throw a gooseneck ball in it one day, so I don't want to have to eagle-eye this pyro all the time. I do have plans for future upgrades, once I get my 'Rag installed and figure out where I'm going from there.


Sorry for the novel, just looking for a heads-up on whether or not I can cut down some surface area.

TIA for the help.

[Begle1]

For a short-term application, either sled-pulling or dyno queening, I don't think that many run any kind of finny cooler at all. Seeker? KTA? I think that they just make due with large reservoirs and ice. I've only seen a couple serious drag rigs with water coolers, I don't know if they run a more weight-sensitive solution or not.


If you're towing, then you'd want a finny cooler for sure, or else you're just going to heat the water up to intake air temperature and won't get any gain at all.

[Tacoclaw]

My truck is a DD. Never pulled it, and will not dyno it very often. I'm just doing this now so I won't be doing it later after I spent 3 hours towing a gooseneck down the interstate in 3rd gear trying to keep my pyro sane.

I'm probably just worrying too much, but since i've got the time to burn, why not?

[Begle1]

If you're towing you're going to want as large a radiator in the charge water circuit as you can get.

Over the short-term, water can absorb a lot of heat. But over a long-term period of time, the water is going to heat up to the charge air temperature. At that point, the limiting factor in the effectiveness of your system will be the size of your radiator.

I believe that an air-to-air CAC with a given surface area is going to reject the same amount of heat as a liquid-to-air radiator with the same surface area. Provided that the air-to-air CAC is the same size as the radiator in the air-to-water CAC, the benefits of the water-based system are a much higher initial heat-soaking ability and a CAC unit that doesn't leak as much boost. But you won't have any increased continous cooling ability over an air-to-air cooler if the radiator isn't the same size.

Stop-light to stop-light you can get away with a smaller radiator because you're under power for a small amount of time, the water soaks up the heat, and then the little radiator has a long time to cool the water back down. But doing something like going up a grade for 30 minutes, and that initial heat soaking ability is going to overwhelmed really quick, and all the water at that point becomes is a means to transmit heat from one air-to-metal heatsink to another.

Ramble ramble ramble?

[Tacoclaw]

Makes sense to me. I guess if I'm going to do this, I may as well only have to do it once. I was just poking around to see if anyone has actually done this, or something similar, that I can get some real world experience from.

The only real reason it was that size is that the mounting tabs will line right up with the old bolt area for the AC condensor mounts, and the outputs should line up with the hole right beside the radiator that you run the intercooler piping through.

Thanks for the info Begle.