Was thinking about this the other day... would it be practical to refrigerate the intercooler in a boos setup? I was thinking that if cold air is your friend, wouldn't colder be better? Or would the drain on the engine from a refrigerant compressor be more than the power gains one would garner from such a thing?
Related to this, if there's an ideal air temp for engines to burn fuel the most efficiently/produce most power, would it make sense to have on the intake inlet a sort of Y shaped valve that gets air from both a hot side and a cold side -- then you have a temperature controlled valve that moves side to side automatically adjusting the ratio of hot to cold air coming in?
Just idle speculation. The Y valve wouldn't really gain you anything in the summer most likely, cause the cold side (if it's not refrigerated) would frequently be hotter than the ideal temp. I was just thinking of wacky intake stuff the other day.
And on a related note, I've discovered that with normal driving, the air temp with a stock airbox at NOT is about 5 degrees F higher than ambient. It raises some when you just sit there idling, but when you're moving it drops to a pretty steady +5F over whatever the outside temp is.
Correct. The power required to run the AC is more than the gains from using it to directly cool the incoming air. However, some cars do it, specifically Porsche, to keep the intercoolers cool, or at least reduce the temps as far as possible while off boost and off throttle. The idea is to clear the heat while you don't need the engine power for driving, and of course because the intercooler sits right over the engine in the rear of the car. It would heatsoak if left idling and ruin off the line response, so the AC is run through it when you're sitting to offset that (at least it used to be...they may have improved/changed the system).
Well that's sucky... hmm. how about a giant peltier cooling solution?
For those who aren't familiar, peltiers are devices that cool through electricity... essentially a current is run through two plates of different metals, which causes one side to become hot and the other very cold. There are CPU heatsinks that use this kind of solution. Wonder what the electric drain would be for something big enough to cool off an average-sized intercooler...
Didn't know that about the Porsches. That's pretty sweet
Peltiers have also been experimented with...in the end, the enormous amount of energy they require defeats the purpose. Of course, they're also very heavy at this time. Great for cooling CPU's, not so good for large objects like intercoolers.
Best bang for the buck is still an ice water intercooler for drag racing. Very efficient, but does not last long.
There are kits out there that spray Nitrous Oxide directly onto the exterior of the I/C to help cool the intake charge. Its the same principle as using your AC compressor to cool the I/C.
All have been tried, all help, but all are drag oriented. CO2 is also used. It really depends on what you want to do...streets or road race, all of the above are too short lived a solution. Drag racing, they are perfect as there is only a need for a few seconds of running. For longer term applications, the Porsche solutions seems to be about the best idea, but I can't imagine trying to retrofit it into anything else.
What I've been thinking you can do if you have a liquid to air i/c is run the liquid line through a cool can along with a coil from the a/c. The a/c would have a kill switch wired to the throttle so that when you go WOT, the compressor disengages. The cool can would hold enough liquid to keep everything nice and cool during hard accelleration. I would imagine you'd need a temp sensor to keep the i/c from icing up and blocking airflow during cold weather cruising when there isn't much boost/heat in the charge and some sort of kill switch for when you're rolling down the freeway for long periods and don't want to run the compressor.
I had been thinking of this for a while but couldn't figure out how to avoid losing power to run the compressor until I read an article about the Ford Lightning and figured out they kill the compressor somehow under full load situations.
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Santa Cruz, CA
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Also their is that n-ter-cooler kit that nitrous express make that bolts to the intercooler. that lowers the intercooler temperature by alot (cant remember numbers). ive seen alot of cars that have that bolted to their intercoolers..... its add 52 hp on a civic( ) but thats a lot for that
Originally posted by brink And on a related note, I've discovered that with normal driving, the air temp with a stock airbox at NOT is about 5 degrees F higher than ambient. It raises some when you just sit there idling, but when you're moving it drops to a pretty steady +5F over whatever the outside temp is.
What did you do to find this? Install a thermometer in the airbox???
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) SOLD
) but thats a lot for that
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