garshev

I was wondering if anybody has tried an intercooler on a non-supercharged engine and what a person could expect. As the summer heat hits I notice a drop in performance and was interested in installing intercoolers to chill the intake air to revive performance. I can do w/o the headaches of blowers.

RLW

Thinking logically, I would think your performance would deminish due to the obstruction of the chiller and the effect on the air/fuel mixture flow. Superchargers overcome this by pressurizing the intake charge.

HyperBaja

If you gain any power from it, it wont be much. The intercooler and forced induction work amazing when paired togather. Plus, a blower cant be that bad.

puder

i have seen fuel coolers that yuo install bettwn your tanks and carb to lower the fuel temp. Maybe that might help ya out.

mcollinstn

It's like THIS:

An intercooler provides a slight restriction in the path of the intake airflow. This in and of itself is of course slightly DETRIMENTAL to the production of power. Assuming that you have a HUGE intercooler and pose only a SLIGHT restriction to the flow, then you will only experience a SLIGHT degradation in performance.

How an intercooler actually ASSISTS in making power is by cooling the incoming charge, thus making it denser. It does this by running the hot intake charge across a heat exchanger that has cooler water running on the other side. In a boosted situation, the compressed air heats dramatically, nearly to 200 degrees in some cases. The 200 degree air passing across metal cooled by 85 degree water will both cool the air and warm the water. If a high enough volume of water is run through the intercooler then, theoretically, the exit temp of the water can come closer and closer to the temperature it entered at. In this case, a very efficient intercooler can in theory cool the intake charge to very close to that exit temperature. Let's call the difference in temperature between the incoming cooling water and the incoming hot air "delta T1". In reality, you will generally see an exit temp of the intercooler air of approximately (30% of deltaT1)+the temp of the incoming cooling water.

In a boosted application of 200 degree intake charge and 85 degree cooling water, then you got a deltaT1 of 115 degrees. You'll end up with an exit charge temp of around (115X.3)+85 or 120 degrees. A nice difference indeed.

As Tomcat has shown us with his recent tests, very little actual horsepower gain comes from the cooling of the charge, only from the ability to run optimum timing curves on a given grade of fuel without damaging detonation from combustion pressures and temperatures that are too near the critical point.

Now, if we look at your nonboosted application we have already established that we will see some measure of performance degradation from the simple restriction imposed by the intercooler itself.

If we run the numbers on the temps we see something on the order of this:

110 degree intake air. 85 degree water temp. DeltaT1 of 25 degrees. Exit intake charge temp of appx (30% of 25) + 85 = 93 degrees.

Surely you see the lack of benefit here...

Good concept, though.

Remember that many boats lack adequate engine compartment ventilation for a performance motor at WOT in hot climes.. Chocking the hatch open 3 inches or so in hot weather may net you a hundred revs or so - never hurts to check...

Somebody on this board has actually run high capacity ventilator blowers from under the rear seat into the engine compartment and recorded a slight gain...

DJG

What about running an intercooler on top of the carb. This way air/fuel mixture is not afected by the cooler. I think the fuel is allready cool to begin with. the fuel tank in my boat sits down in the bottom of the hull surrounded by cool water. So all you need is to cool the incoming air to the top of the carb.

KAAMA

iTrader: (1)

Nitros gives a nice shot of cool air!

engreps

In the drag racing days we used a fuel cooler. It was a can with the fuel linecoiled upinside which you filled full of ice.

Cooler fuel a more dinse charge more HP.