I've been reading on intercooler alot and i've read that aftercoolers would be alot more effecient than an air to air or water to air intercooler... does anyone have experience with all these types of cooling systems? Wich one would be best and why?
Thx
No aftercoolers are typically used on SCed applications where the compressed air goes right into the intake. The aftercooler lays a radiator inbetween the intake and the SC and cools the air. An intercooler is typically on turbo setups and cools the air coming out of the turbo inline with the intake charge tubing.
Aftercooling would be better because definitly cause it does not cause a pressure drop like an intercooler does. But is going to be more pricy and cost more to fabricate something up.
An aftercooler and an intercooler is the same thing, "aftercooler" is Vortech's name for an air/water intercooler..
obviously water has much better heat transfer than air, which is why a well designed air/water intercooling setup is superior.. many have problems with retaining heat though on street cars because they aren't put together well.. if you have a large water reservoir, a power pump, and a large heat exchanger then you won't have this problem even after back to back hard runs..
the problem is though that this system is much more complicated, and adds a bunch of crap.
alot of drag cars pretty much just bypass the heat exchanger or have a small one, and rely on ice in the water reservoir to keep the water at a very cool temp, because they only have to worry about one pass at a time..
Also, many OEM cars have come factory with such setups and so they obviously work well..
i will be running an air/water with about a 12"x12" radiator and fan + pump for it
One thing that most don't realize: air/water is not as optimal for high-load driving. Hi-load means drag passes w/o cooldown time, and pretty much all forms of track driving.
Why? Because water does a great job at keeping charge temps cool when the water temp is near ambient. Because of the thermal mass of water, it takes a long time to heat up. However, for the exact same reason, once the water gets hot, it takes a lot of air exposure to cool it down. In a track situation, the water will get to high temperatures quick, and unless you have a large cooling situation, will stay high.
My opinion is that in order to keep a tracked car cool for an air/water, you need to run a large water radiator. The size of the water radiator needed gets to the point where you are better off just running an air/air setup instead. Plus, with the water/air setup you have to dork around with the water pump, resevoir, and water supply routing.
For a street car, it's not a bad idea if you can get high quality components to make it high efficiency.
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lets just say a full turbo build
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