dumb intercooler question

um, why wouldnt an air to air intercooler work,? was just think about that and im sure im missing something huge

Space is limited due to the shape/design of the front end

Good point. But if someone were to get creative, how would it work? From what I've seen here the intercooler is put in between the charger and intake manifold. What if it was: cold air intake pipe, connected to intercooler, then connected to pipe leading to supercharger. There wouldn't be air pushed through the intercooler but rather pulled. Am I satin this right lmao.

1. air to water cools better than air to water. 
2. there are applications already made for our cars
3.they are not all that pricey compared to other cars A/W intercooler setups

Very true I guess my question would be if it'd even work

Sure it could be made to work. Not sure where you could get that kind of diameter piping under the blower though. 
If you are heart set on air to air intercoolers, take a look at some of the turbo 3800 builds.

If you are just trying to reduce KR cheaply, look elsewhere.

Plus with a 3.5 pulley you dont really need an intercooler yet. Sure its good insurance on a hot day but you are not putting it to full use at 9psi. Assuming we are talking about modding your riv.

highwaywarrior wrote:

What if it was: cold air intake pipe, connected to intercooler, then connected to pipe leading to supercharger. There wouldn't be air pushed through the intercooler but rather pulled.

The way you're describing the setup, you'd be cooling the air before it even gets hot. Passing the air entering the supercharger through a cooler does nothing - it's already close to ambient temp. The cooling needs to occur after the air has been compressed - on the discharge side of the blower.

Ohhhhhh, sweet theres a chance that I will be stationed in guam, and I will be bringing the riv with me. Its hot and unbelievsbly humid, so an intercooler would help with lots of stuff

Now that ive read from the ford supercoupes forum, nah not worth air to air

highwaywarrior wrote:

Now that ive read from the ford supercoupes forum, nah not worth air to air

Water intercoolers really work quite well. The downside has nothing to do with cooling ability but the added weight & complexity over air-air. Water weighs kind of a lot, then you have the pump which is a failure point and electrical accessory, and so fourth.
The supercoupes are really quite interesting to compare to the L67 engine. They have an earlier less efficient blower (I don't even think they have coated rotors but I could be mistaken) but they can get away with running around 10-11psi and like a ~3" pulley or something out of the factory since they're intercooled. And the performance numbers tell that story down to the letter. Lots and lots and lots of immediate torque and less impressive peak horsepower. 1994-1995: 230hp@4400rpm/330ft-lb@2500rpm.

Part of the problem is space - our supercharger is mounted directly on top of the intake manifold. There isn't enough room for the heat exchanger. That's why we use a cool-water (size of a heater core) heat exchanger that can fit between the SC and intake manifold.

If you had an external centrifugal supercharger (or a turbo) you could pipe your heated compressed air to a larger heat exchanger out front.

I did this on my Kenne Bell Mustang. Welded a block plate that forced the air out to a hole that was made in side of blower, from there air flowed to an air to air then into the blower. I have never seen inside our blower so not sure what would be needed.

Or you use something like this:
http://www.maceengineering.com.au/AIR-TO-AIR-INTERCOOLER-PLATE-2-SUIT-L67-SUPERCHARGED-V6

and before you ask, no it won't go in our cars. Our engines are the wrong way around.

An interesting tidbit about A2A and positive displacement blowers, is I've read that its rather a pain to tune correctly since you end up with effectively a massive long airspace between the butterfly plate and the valves.  The tip in just off idle is the trouble point in setups like this and even the Ford SC guys can have issues.

Wow

To add to the dumb intercooler questions..... What if you routed the coolant lines into the engine coolant lines? People claim non-intercooled outlet temps can be up to 300*, intercooler drops temps 80-150*, so you're right around 180*. Since most of us run 180* thermostats, what's the harm in this? I know there's probably some huge reason why nobody does this, so please explain it.

The outlet temp of the blower is not always super hot. It's not making 300f+ while it's idling and cruising. That 180f engine coolant temp would be absolutely heat-soaking the blower to 180f when it otherwise doesn't need to run that hot. The second thing is that if your cool side of the intercooler system is 180f (instead of an ambient temp), you won't have 80-150 temp drops because the system won't have the same efficiency as it would with a greater difference of extremes. ie 50f at the heat exchanger can cool 300f down more effectively than 180f can.

Unfortunately since the supercharger is bolted right up to the engine, it's always conducting in some of the heat from it. All we can do is try to cool it off faster than it absorbs the heat. It's a big problem with intercoolers like this because once the engine thoroughly heats up, the intercooler is spending a certain amount of its capacity just to get engine heat out of the blower (this is not heat the s/c is producing) and so the intercooler's capacity can quickly be exceeded when in boost.

turtleman wrote:

The second thing is that if your cool side of the intercooler system is 180f (instead of an ambient temp), you won't have 80-150 temp drops because the system won't have the same efficiency as it would with a greater difference of extremes. ie 50f at the heat exchanger can cool 300f down more effectively than 180f can.

^-- that part. Thermal transfer is a funny thing. I like to simplify it to being like a water siphon. The higher the difference the more efficient it is. The higher the height difference of the top end of a hose vs the bottom end, the faster the water flows in a siphon.(efficiency) Not exactly apples to apples, but it gets the concept across.

im pretty sure im going to try E85 + 1" Phenolic spacer.

From what i've searched on the net, ive yet to see this combo on a L67.
Ive read that E85 cools so well that the blower is only warm after hitting engine running temps.
I have no first hand experience... yet.. but we'll see..

values in W/(m K)
Aluminum 205
Phenolic cast resins 0.15

I doubt that E85 is cooling the intake charge that much. What it's doing mostly is allowing combustion to occur at a higher temperature with proper timing, without knock. Would like to be proven wrong, though. Let us know what you find!

+1 on what AA said. E85 doesn't cool, a better way to think of it is as a higher octane gas.

N2O on the other hand, does cool the intake charge, as I understand.

Just what I read on the internet.. . E85 keeps temps lower and less heat sink on blower. I dunno

I read a post where a dude said he could touch his blower after running it and it was only warm.

charlieRobinson wrote:

Just what I read on the internet.. . E85 keeps temps lower and less heat sink on blower. I dunno

I read a post where a dude said he could touch his blower after running it and it was only warm.

Ummm. The fuel is nowhere near the blower, dude. E85 should make ZERO difference on blower temps. Think about it.....

well, clearly, the best solution is to set up a second set of injectors to directly blow a mist of e85 on the outside of the engine and blower.  what could go wrong?


was the guy talking about meth injection?  pre blower, that does cool it. (but don't use e85)