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Air to Water or Air to Air Intercooler


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Yeah, I know this has been asked a million times. I know there are pro's and con's to both. By a stroke of luck, I have both in my posession. The Air to Air intercooler I have is from a Ludespeed Stage II turbokit for my Impreza. I never got around to re-installing it and may never do it. It's an air/unit but I'm concerned about the airflow over the intercooler not being enough and it would just flow over it.

 

I also have an air-water intercooler but no water tank to store the water in it. It's a 'Laminova' (sp?) unit. I purchased it in September of last year from ProECM.com (Dave there) with the intent on turbocharging the XT6 but my money ran dry and I dumped all the plans. So it sat in my garage. If you have any air/water intercooler experience, please fill me in on how I'd have to approach this because I'm clueless. I already have the intercooler, water pump, and 'heat exchanger' with clamps and such. I know I need a water/mix solution tank, intake-turbo, turbo-intercooler and intercooler to throttle body fabrication. Plus, where would I get the tank to hold the water? Thanks for any help and tips. This all would go on an RX turbo I purchased earlier this week.

 

intercoolers-2.jpg

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The tank shouldnt need to be special. A large windshield washer fluid resivoir would probably work. I had a AWIC in my possesion from a JDM EJ22T. I had the pump and radiator, but the radiator was too small. Would have needed 2 of them.

 

At high speeds your A-A I/C will be best. Expecially with a scoop and plenty of airflow. If you wanna hide the IC and have efficient cooling at high and low speeds, i would use the A-W I/C.

 

-Brian

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junkie forgets the usefullness of being able to add ice to the awic for those "special " occasions hehe

 

and you can use oil cooler/tranny coolers ganged up to cool down the water

also the larger the water tank the more time you have before the water temp gets hi enough to be usless as a cooling medium

short blasts and and such it should do just fine

long hard pulls with out enough cooling for the water itself

then it becomes useless i f i had a awic i would add a fan to at least one of teh radiators to help with lowspeed cooling/idle cooling to get the water temps back down faster when it was off boost ect

 

 

hmm someone needs to write a prooggie for usmb just to decode my typing skills...

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Air temps shouldnt really get that high, but an adiquate radiator will be needed. Your AWIC seems pretty small, so i dont know how that will effect things.

 

If you mount your radiator in the front of the car, it oughta get enough airflow to cool the water just fine. The water isnt going to reach temps of 200degree's like our engines.

 

-Brian

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if you are concerned about air flow you may want to make up some flexible ducting to help seal between you scoop and the hood.

 

my current IC sits right at he hood opening level with some rubberpieces to seal it while the hood is closed. this will all change by next week when my new IC gets here:brow: .

 

as for wich one to use? practicaly speaking the air to air IC is going to fit and be a rather straight forward install once you get it plumed properly.

 

but that would be really cool to see a air to water intercooler instalation done right. that thing would have great off the line performance.

 

as for the tank question. It would look really nice if you could find a nice tig welded aluminum or stainless one. and while I am spending you money. how about running the cooling lines to the front of the car and thru a heatercore mounted in front of the radiator? I just changed one on a Taurus the other day and was tring to think of other uses for it. but I guess thats would be the job of the "radiator thingy" as you say.

ok I guess Im not much help so I will stop now.

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The intercooler Kevin has is utilizing Laminova intercooler tubes. These tubes makes it possible to extract 2.5 time more energy (heat) than a bar/plate unit of the same size.

 

The water temperature is of course dependant on the front heat exchanger. How big it is and how much cold air that flows through it. Our testing have shown that that intercooler is capable of taking out over 200 f out of the intake air.

 

On the mini cooper kit we just finished, we see no more than 25f increase in inlet temperature from standing still to redline in 5'th gear, which is in excess of 100mph. The stock intercooler was showing 165f out, while ours showed <120 at the end of the test. So to say that an Air-air unit is better at higher speed is not correct when it comes to our intercoolers. Traditionally I would I agree. But that is for air/water intercoolers that are constructed around encasing an air/air unit. We have a completely different approach.

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200DEG temp drop!! dam. thats rather good. pressure drop is reasonable I assume?

 

yeah I am going to get a big ol tat that says noboby listens to Russ:lol:

ok no Im not.

The intercooler flows 30% better than the stock WRX intercooler, so yes, the pressure drop is very reasonable.

/David

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  • 2 months later...

i just sniped one from ebay i couldnt afford it but i needed it!!!

 

and this is what its going in :)

 

http://nwerdt.com/members/jacobrussell/index.html

 

http://www.nwerdt.com/nwerdt_videos/Escort%2014.36.mpg

 

recently she went from white to black and aback to a complete stock "body"

 

witha rebuilt engine 9:1 pistons and a ported head and a beefed up trans

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Don't mind me! I'm posting this picture for future reference.

 

 

this only makes sense you want to draw directly out of the resivour as to get a little cooler water so you dont burn up your pump .. you could also use the cooler ive seen b/m i think makes it . it has to inlets and two outlets its made so you can use on cooler for engine oil and tranny oil.

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Kevin, don't you have a air water intercooler sitting around?
Yeah, I'm going to try and use it on an XT6. A picture of the air/water intercooler is on the first page of this thread (on the right hand side). It'll fail (Mr. Pessimist) but I'm going to try. I'll be playing with the AWD XT6 after I get situated with the Techworks install on the RX. :)
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so you are going to turbo one of the XT6's?
I'll try....using some random pieces hanging around my garage. Nothing new! :) It'll probably be a VERY long project though.

 

I sent my XT6 to a shop to get it done (Rallispec) before but now I'm going to try to go through the pains of doing it homemade. I don't have a load of $$$ to be spending on this. I'll be *&%$ for many months to come, I know.

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