Water Cooled Intercooler

[deansr33]

Hey guys,

I have a r33 gtst and im going for the stock look so im looking at getting a r34 intercooler and i have been thinking about tapping into the rear water sprayer and pluming it to some sprayers ion the front bar to cool the intercooler down. has anyone had experience with it before is it worth my time will i gain anything from my efforts?

the reason for pluming it to the rear spray is i dont have to do any wiring and so no switches need to be fitted nor another bottle and on the stick it as a spray only function doesnt it?.

what do you all think?

(im looking at only running in future a full exhaust tune k&n pannel with stock box and a tune )

Thanks for your time guys

Dean

[paulr33]

pointless and you wont need it. the r34 gtr intercooler will be fine (assuming GTR core, dont use GTT, its the same as ECR33, pointless upgrade)

if you insist on doing it dont use the wiper jets get proper water spray jets and use them

[wolverine]

Paul the R34 GT-t core is slightly bigger than the R33.

[Rekin]

pointless and you wont need it. the r34 gtr intercooler will be fine (assuming GTR core, dont use GTT, its the same as ECR33, pointless upgrade)

if you insist on doing it dont use the wiper jets get proper water spray jets and use them

Paul you're losing your edge.

The r34 smic is larger and direct fit to a r33 gtst. Water sprays are useful if done correctly. Hell, evos come with water sprayers from factory.

You will need an atomizing nozzle as you want a fine mist on the intercooler. The smaller the droplets, the greater heat absorption.

[GTSBoy]

I have been through all this. R32 GTSt with original SMIC. I installed a Cordia washer bottle in front of the driver's side front wheel complete with a Bosch pump (from a Commodore) in place of the original big arse Cordia pump. This gave less flow but more pressure. Just used a 4mm garden misting nozzle as the sprayer itself, as it put out a decent amount of water and spread it just far enough to cover the core.

In hot weather in particular it made a noticeable difference to how the car drove. Rather than use a simple/stupid controller I bought the AutoSpeed Intelligent Water Spray Controller kit (designed by Julian Edgar and the guys from eLabtronics here in Adelaide, and quite a good design). This controller measured the ambient air temp and the temperature of the core itself (via thermistors) and also monitored the duty cycle of the injectors. It would only allow the spray to activate if the temperature difference was bigger than a threshold value (that you could set up yourself) and when the injector pulse width was over a threshold (again, which you could set up yourself). This was a brilliant controller. Always gave me what I wanted, and used up the ~5L of water in the sprayer so slowly that I only had to fill it up every few weeks.

Control systems that just work off of boost pressure or other simple switching ideas suck balls and will empty a tank in less than a day. I've tried that too. No good.

I recommend reading the old AutoSpeed articles on this thing if interested in actually doing a water spray.

But then I upgraded to a good FMIC and I simply could not tell any difference between having the water sprayer activated and not. The bigger cooler was doing a good enough job that it didn't benefit from a spray. Was only ~160-170rwkW though. So I pulled it all out.

Evos have water sprays on the IC because it needed to be homologated for competition, not because it was really needed on the street. Remember, factory EVOs are only nominally about the same power level as I was running on the RB20 with the boost would up (OK, so they are definitely making more power than that, but only like 20% more or something). So it's not as though they wil be taxing the performance of their big cores on the street either.

Conclusion? Worth it on the SMIC especially if running more boost. Probably not worth it on a decent FMIC. Definitely not worth doing with a dumb controller. Too annoying trying to keep the tank full. Doing it off the existing washer system without any control system at all is just daft.

[STATUS]

Paul the R34 GT-t core is slightly bigger than the R33.

Still utter junk though, only good for std boost.

[wolverine]

^^not arguing that fact just pointing out that they aren't the same.