cheekychimp
Well-known member
BarnesMobile,
I understand where you are coming from, I too would really like to know which system is better for a street car. But the problem here is that in order to get definitive results you would need two identical cars, one with an air-to-air and one with a water-to-air intercooler and run them over varying but identical loads to ascertain which worked best in different circumstances.
When does the water-to-air stop being efficient? Well in layman's terms basically as soon as it's temperature rises to the point where it can no longer reduce the temperature of the charge air as well as the ambient air can.
The problem is that anticipating when this will happen is almost impossible as it depends on so many other factors. How hot your charge air is, how efficient your water-to-air unit is (and therefore how quickly it absorbs heat), how big your auxiliary radiator is.
Think of it this way, a pan on a hob full of water that is being continuously pumped out of the pan and through another shallow container over which air is being blown with an electric fan, before returning to the original pan.
How long will it take for the water to boil? That depends on the setting of the hob (how much heat your engine is producing), the surface area of water exposed to cooling air in the shallow container (the size of your auxiliary rad) the speed of flow and size of the fan (combination of frontal area of your auxiliary rad and vehicle speed) ... not to mention how cold the water was to start with !!!
It's tough for anyone even with a water-to-air system to be able to say much more than it works, compared to a similar air-to-air.
Paul.
I understand where you are coming from, I too would really like to know which system is better for a street car. But the problem here is that in order to get definitive results you would need two identical cars, one with an air-to-air and one with a water-to-air intercooler and run them over varying but identical loads to ascertain which worked best in different circumstances.
When does the water-to-air stop being efficient? Well in layman's terms basically as soon as it's temperature rises to the point where it can no longer reduce the temperature of the charge air as well as the ambient air can.
The problem is that anticipating when this will happen is almost impossible as it depends on so many other factors. How hot your charge air is, how efficient your water-to-air unit is (and therefore how quickly it absorbs heat), how big your auxiliary radiator is.
Think of it this way, a pan on a hob full of water that is being continuously pumped out of the pan and through another shallow container over which air is being blown with an electric fan, before returning to the original pan.
How long will it take for the water to boil? That depends on the setting of the hob (how much heat your engine is producing), the surface area of water exposed to cooling air in the shallow container (the size of your auxiliary rad) the speed of flow and size of the fan (combination of frontal area of your auxiliary rad and vehicle speed) ... not to mention how cold the water was to start with !!!
It's tough for anyone even with a water-to-air system to be able to say much more than it works, compared to a similar air-to-air.
Paul.
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