A Different Approach To Intercooling

[Bond]

Not sure if anyone has seen these but a few people on a 4wd forum i use have made some water to air intercoolers using Laminova cores. Hard to explain on here so i will just post up the link to a build up.

http://forum.ih8mud.com/40-55-series-tech/...ntercooler.html

I have seen others made up that fit into a slightly modified inlet manifold which greatly reduced intake piping.

Anyway i thought some on here might like to read.

Cheers

[GeeTR]

Looks fairly large, would work well in driving sports where not your moving quickly enough to get air through a Air->Air cooler, hence 4WD'ing. Beautifully built piece of kit.

Edited September 7, 2008 by GeeTR

[Bond]

I have seen a setup where the manifold is similar to a skyline and they just make the manifold a little larger to accomodate the laminovas inside which takes up a lot less room. Not much done with them here in aus but there is potential especially after seeing the flow and cooling tetsts.

[Duncan]

yeah we are installing one in the new race car. will be interesting to see how it goes.

its a pretty large unit, we are putting where the standard battery and fuse box live.

we are expecting (hoping?) for:

much lower inlet temps under high boost (over 25psi)

sharper throttle with piping half the length of standard

Just jap have just got them in, they should be a very good price.

this is similar to what we got

[TheTunersGroup]

Not sure if anyone has seen these but a few people on a 4wd forum i use have made some water to air intercoolers using Laminova cores. Hard to explain on here so i will just post up the link to a build up.

http://forum.ih8mud.com/40-55-series-tech/...ntercooler.html

I have seen others made up that fit into a slightly modified inlet manifold which greatly reduced intake piping.

Anyway i thought some on here might like to read.

Cheers

Great thread Bond,

Water to air intercoolers can work very well on cars where packaging an air to air intercooler can be tricky. A mate of mine had a turbo MR2 and he was forever having problems fitting a decent sized air to air intercooler into the MR2's engine bay.

By using an air to water intercooler, you can get high efficiency of heat transfer out of the intake charge and into the water, then you have a ton of options at the front of the car to cool that water, without the packaging problems of trying to fit a big intercooler into the engine bay.

Also with a water to air intercooler, it is possible to run the water piping through a chilling tank which you can fill with ice. The ice chills the water to below ambient air temperature, which really cools the intercooler down. The ice doesn't last long, but it can be useful for short sessions etc.

- Adam

[Bond]

I was more trying to show the way in which these guys are actually doing their water to air setups. They are using a different kind of core (Laminova) which i think are pretty cool themselves. They have water flowing through the middle and air flowing around them and over fins that are 0.2mm apart....massive surface area. Also they are long and skinny so are able to be intergrated into manifolds themselves.

Cheers

James

[GeeTR]

Wonder the feasibility of making each plenum runner out of the stuff ha.

[daisu]

I actually have a set of these laminova cores sitting here in my room, going to use them on my next engine (twincam RB30).

Have a look on the outerlimits4x4 forums, the same fellow from the ih8mud forums has got a thread going on there about them.

ESS tuning make a supercharger kit for BMW which integrates these cores directly into their inlet manifold so there is no piping between the supercharger and plenum.

Edited September 8, 2008 by daisu

[Bond]

Hey Daisu outerlimits is where i first saw them being used. I think there is some great potential with these cores.......its just going to take some1 handy to take the forst step and try fabbing one up. No trouble with the cops and front mounts!

[TheProDaniel]

Good thread, mate of mine is looking into doing this. I'll keep an eye on it.

[swanny180]

Nice thread!!

Interesting product... The setup on the 4wd looks great, really nicely made

[daisu]

..its just going to take some1 handy to take the forst step and try fabbing one up

They've already got one fabbed up and running on his car with datalogging on inlet/outlet temps.

ESS tuning use them in their 10k+ supercharger kits for BMW's.

GM uses them as factory items on some of their recent cars.

I have no doubt that they will catch on and become a popular water/air cooler.

Admittedly they are a bit more expensive compared to the FMIC kits you can pick up for a couple hundred dollars, but I'm sure the efficiency and flow rates will rival the name brand options (ARC, PWR, Trust etc)