have to decide between an air/air intercooler or an air/water intercooler. the car is a street car. i want to push the motor to 550-600 wheel hp. what should i do. if i go air/water, i can practically freeze the water and have some good results at the track, yet be inefficient on the street. if i go with the air/air i suffer heat soak, and a not so effiecient way of cooling air. my last thought was to run an air/air intercooler with a smaller air/ water intercooler inline somewhere. i am doing all of my own piping so i dont have to worry where it will go.

if i run an air to air i will use the aps dr series 650 intercooler.

if i run an air to water i will use a custom spearco unit

if i run both i will use the ap intercooler with a pwr barrel air/water intercooler.

i have pictured the aps intercooler and the pwr intercooler. in any case i will not use the aps intercooler piping it comes with. also if i choose an air to water intercooler a water resovour will be where my battery is with some type of heat exchanger where the intercooler goes.

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This would be the biggest PITA ever, but could you make a modular system that you could switch to on weekend for track runing? I know you have the skeelz to do it. it would involve a lil more design work, but w\ the amount of piping the aps front mount gives you, you should be able to make something work. Using that piping from turbo to throttle body, hacking it somewhere and making new piping to go to your air\water setup.
Then youd just need to remove the air to air intercooler and a couple pipes on the weekends. you could make it so the intercooler could drop through the bottom of the bumper so you wouldn't have to keep pulling your bumper cover on and off.

just my .02
Ashley

well, if you look at my third option it is to run both intercoolers at the same time. i would run the smaller pwr unit inline with the aps unit. also i could take the pwr unit out when i am not using it and replace it with a straight piece.

Originally posted by STEALTH-WRX
i could take the pwr unit out when i am not using it and replace it with a straight piece.

Thats what I would do. Besides, the car is gonna be driven mostly on the street, not the track, and the APS front mount is sick.
Ashley

Originally posted by STEALTH-WRX
if i run both i will use the ap intercooler with a pwr barrel air/water intercooler.
the ap intercooler thing confused me but its just a typo. I get it now

who can get me the aps front mount for cost.

Why not the FMIC, with a custom CO2 IC spray system for track use, and then water injection on top of that? That should be a very robust setup that would cover your needs.

Kevin

water injection? that is a possibility. i woud be interested in it but i have never found someone that really knows about it to tell me everything. i cant base everything on what aquamist says on their website. anyone have personal experiece

IMHO, If you're going to start refilling and spraying gases, just go for a small clean NOS setup and cut the crap. You're gonna spray the hell out of a big piece of metal to cool the intake charge instead of just cooling the intake charge directly... someone just was pointing this out in that N-tercooler install thread I think.

Here's an off the wall idea... what about the possibility of rerouting your AC air?

I'd definitely look into WI. There are several people around here who have done it or are currently setting it up. It's apparently not rocket science if managed properly.

When I used to work at a shop that built DSM and Honda full race drag engines, we had a few customers use water injection. Im actually going to make my own system for my car when I get a bigger turbo. It would be very effective in your application Nick, and if you used it w\ a water to air intercooler at the track you'd stand alot to gain esp on race gas. The best part is that the steam keeps everything cleaner inside the chamber. Its pretty fool proof and easy to set up.
Ashley

sounds good. lets do it. what do i need.

you can get the aquamist 1s setup and be done with it. It works great.
Or back it up with one of their computers in the more advanced kits.

Here's a great place to get any of them...
Turbometrics (http://turbometrics.com/pricelist.html)

-Mike

More money than GOD! :rolleyes:

Aside from that you just need to be intimate with Fuel maps, ignition maps, ecu retuning, transmission rebuilding skills, new clutch, did I mention money, an entirely new short block to handle the 25-30 lbs of boost it will take to make anywhere near that kind of HP. While your at it, you may as well install another engine and twin turbo that as well. Lets not forget a couple of classes in physics and thermodynamics, a couple in heat transfer, and at least one or two in Calculus to be able to understand said courses....

Why the heck would you think you can reliably drive a 550-600 HP daily driven street car? What makes you come to that number as your goal? How can you possibly think you need that much HP?


ORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

you could come back down to earth and build a 300 HP car that can acheive some sort of reliability...

just a though..

SCRAPPYDO
stephen

dude where have you been. here is my set up.

http://www.clubwrx.net/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=261978

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Does your autronic ecu have a aux. power output? you might be able to run and control the system off that. I'm not familiar w\ that ECU... I know utec or PSI 3 users can set the aux output to turn on at a specific boost or RPM point. I'm going to use a PSI 3 to control mine. there are a couple threads on here about guys who have done it themselves. All you really need is a tank, pump, and nozzle. and some way of controlling it. I have seen some guys use their windshield washer tank and pump. That is pretty stealth, and for the track you could fill it w\ distilled ice water...
Ashley

You might even be able to use a intercooler spray controller to control the water injection.

Who cares? The man wants to make a time bomb and has the money to do it, I say more power to him.

Biography I am sick of working on cars, but i cannot stop
Location Lake Forest, Calfornia
Interests Metal Fabrication
Occupation Welder

:lol: I like your cat:lol:

You still did not answer my question though (not that you have to).

parts alone do not reliable HP make...
You have lots of very nice looking parts...kudos for you. You must have the money situation taken care of...

the rest can still be a problem...

SCRAPPYDO
stephen

I'd can't wait to see this thing come together by the way.

jblaine,
Living vicariously

the autronic has power out puts and it can controll boost, nitrous, launch control, and any 12v signal.

as far as 500-600 hp. i want my motor to be capable of making that power and make that power when i shove race gas in it with a race map. on the street i will only use 91 octane and have about 350 wheel hp. the motor will probably see 500-600 hp about 5 or 6 times in its life and that will be for about 10 seconds at a time.

Ah, that makes far more sense...good luck!

Thanks for bringing me up to speed. By the way, I still think that cat ROCKS man.. I mean look at him, he is Fearless... Fierce... and Focused...

hahahaha

SCRAPPYDO
stephen

that cat is so crazy now. i need to get his nuts cut because hes getting really big and crazy. bengal kats are supposed to get 15-25 lbs. he is 4 months old and already 9-10 lbs. he is very long.

kool the water injection should be pretty easy then... by the way hows your cat's leg\paw?
Ashley

Well if you find me then you have found somebody who knows quite a bit about water injection, from personal experience. I've had it on my car for over a month now, and have tested it with 3 different nozzle sizes and different turn-on points. Several times have i tuned the air/fuel ratios and timing, as well as boost. Just last night i was tuning it for highway gears, i.e. 4th and 5th. It safely runs at 13:1 AFR @18psi from 3000rpm all the way to around 5500rpm, i didnt go any faster when i was tuning. The system im using is one i pieced together myself, but could easily replicate for anybody interested. The car pulls so incredibly hard, and the timing values are even higher than that used in a TXS stage II map, by several degrees. Also, my idc's are way down, near 70% maximum. This is all with a 3gph nozzle@100psi.

my mods are:

GP-moto 4-2-1 manifold
ExhaustDepot Downpipe
UTEC
samco I/C hose
----untouched---
Stock airbox/silencer/filter
Stock Turbo
Stock IC
Stock Cat-back
Stock Injectors


Also as a sidenote, i have managed to rig my old Blitz Spec S Solenoid to the stock wiring harness, and im controlling it with the UTEC. It works AWESOME. I can run as much boost as i want with it, and i dont need the ABC anymore. Its as simple as splicing the wires. There are several other water injection threads, and i've posted in most of them.

If you have any Q's regarding WI just ask, i'd love to share my experiences with it.

Jeff

what water mixture do you run. how much is it to piece a kit togther. what happens if you motor siezes or sticks open and shoves water into your engine. is their a check vavle in the system.

you use such a small amount the i dont think it could ever do damage to your engine if it stuck open. It turns to steam anyway... Most people use distilled water. some use alky as well
Ashley

Um... steam when pressurized will revert back to water given enough pressure. So to anybody who is going to attempt introducing a non-compressible liquid into an internal combustion cycle do so at your own risk. Because doing it wrong means a large headache...

Gool luck..

SCRAPPYDO
stephen

water when heated to 1200'C generally becomes steam, but you do have to be careful.

The main thing I would have to say, is after tuning a car for a friend after he fitted a TD06 and FMIC, is he would deffo go the chargecooler route in future for any dragging. Another guy with a similar setup has said the same thing, he went from a chargecooler to larger FMIC in search of power, but thinks the loss of response is a bad move. Datalogging has shown an increase of 0.15 second drop off in the power with each gearchange, with 4 changes (was on a short RA box) this means 0.6 seconds longer off the power than compared to a charecooler setup.

Both the setups in question use pipework about 20%-30% shorter than that used in the APS setup, which will pressumable be worse still.

I know you can use anti lag, but the less work it has to do the better.

If you still want to go FMIC, I would think the best route would be a custom rad and IC such that the inlet piping was as short as possible, similar to the WRC cars.

Paul

damn. dont know what to do. i just want a crazy fast street can that can run a 10 second 1/4 with race gas and a race ecu map. what to do?

I still think the air/water cooler and ice resevoir was your best plan for the strip. Advantages in Inlet pipe volume alone would be pretty huge.

3" pipe about 8ft long by the looks of it would be about 2 cubic feet, at an average of say 400CFM flow while turbo is spooling (from say 0 to 800) means 0.15 seconds just to flow enough air to fill the pipework. Compared to my air/water, with a 12" pipe length, your looking at 1/8 of that time, so about 0.02 seconds.

I know it's not that simple, but it does give you an idea about the real impact of that APS IC.

Did you get anywhere with finding a rad core for the air/water cooling rad?

I'm looking at being able to fit a rad with a core 660x280mm frontal area, and upto 60mm thick. I will probably go for a core about 40mm thick though to minimise impact on the main engine rad.

Paul

i actually designed one on a cad program and sent it to a custom radiator company. an aluminum radiator 26 inches long, 10 inches tall, and 1.5 inches wide is going to cost me $400. the core for that is 24x10x1.5. maybe if i buy two i can get a deal. let me know. i still dont know what to do about the actually intercooler. what do you think about the pwr unit. i can get that barrell intercooler in a 6 inch diameter with a 10 inch long core.

For that power level, I'd put together a properly sized a/w IC and be done with it. As long as the heat exchanger, radiator, and reserviour are sized properly, you shouldn't see any heat soak. I'd also put a fan on the radiator to come on at idle while sitting at a light or something and make sure the reserviour is shielded from heat as much as possible. No need for two IC's.

Water injection will also be your friend. Especially when running around on the 91 octane. I'm currently putting together a system for my car. Its going to be fully programable/mapable with my own custom controller and should end up costing me less than aquamist's base kit. PM me if you want more info on it.

Thanks
-- Ed

I think your first stab with the Spearco engine side matrix was pretty good.

I figure on getting a 9500cm^3 core into my unit, which is comparable to some FMIC cores (like the 99-00 APS one). Except the charge air side is more open reducing pressure loss, while the coolant side is water instead of air, so in theory the core should perform as good as a considerably larger air/air one.

But quite how it will perform I don't know, I'm just going to put the largest core I can fit, a good sized rad and see how it goes.

My rad is going on a Legacy, so your WRX will likely not fit, and I'm in the UK which doesn't help. However, if you get the parts sorted I think there would be a market for a proper kit.

Like vaus says, if you get the components sized properly, you can't go far wrong. The main downsides is number of parts, potential cost (although pretty good compared to complete FMIC kits) and weight (but again, long steel pipes weight a fair bit).

Paul

okay then. i will step up and do the air/ water intercooler.

BTW, when I was thinking about an a/w setup, I was thinking of stacking the core, radiator, and a fan on top of it (with some space between the core and radiator of course) and putting the whole thing where our stock IC is. This way the scoop remains functional and should look nice and clean. Not sure where to put the reserviour though.

-- Ed

resovour can go where the battery goes

Originally posted by STEALTH-WRX
damn. dont know what to do. i just want a crazy fast street can that can run a 10 second 1/4 with race gas and a race ecu map. what to do?

you should email or call my buddy ron @ axis... he has crazy plans for subarus as well.. im sure he could help you along with ideas or advice...

-mike

i have his number. i have talked to him many times before. i didnt even think about calling him on this one. ill have to

This is the kind of project you can really spend some (quality) time up at night dreaming about!
I would really like to talk over some of your thoughts and issues.
Ashley can hook you up with contact #s if you would like.

Best regards,

Sean Logan
GPMoto Inc.

Dan Gurney always built his cars using air to air intercoolers for turbos and air to water for oil cooling. His reason was weight...the less crap he has to carry just means better performance.

On the dyno we always used water to cool anything. The reason being that we could always change the size of the cooler depending on the amount of heat beng generated and we could control temperature quickly for test purposes. But youshould see the size of some of those coolers....the smallest cooler weighed 150lbs dry!

Dan Gurney had the option to put his air/air cooler 12 inches from the turbo, and plenum inlet, we don't really have that option.

As far as weight goes, a full FMIC kit with all the steel pipes as seen on the later APS, MRT and HKS units is probably not mch lighter than a well engineered (also not oversized) air/water system when fitted to an Impreza.

I have my heat exchanger and rad drawn up on CAD and will be sending to the fabricators (Pace Products here in the UK) on monday. They are pretty damn big when you see them drawn full size.

Paul

My point was weight drove his decision. The last version of the engine ended up with the IC being much further away than the version you saw.... and even he had financial considerations in the last season because the money faucet was closing early in the season. At one point there was nothing being spent on the car (nor engine development for that matter) and money was spent on salaries almost exclusively. They just went to the races because the uppers wanted an appearance.

Not that I want to argue or anything like that....I just want to emphasize that weight should probably be the biggest consideration in any modification to any car if performance is the end goal. That's all.

i am only adding 50 total pounds to the entire car.

50lbs ?

that seems very high?

I would be looking at just 10lbs more than a off the shelf FMIC with metal pipes.

Paul

Originally posted by Vaus
BTW, when I was thinking about an a/w setup, I was thinking of stacking the core, radiator, and a fan on top of it (with some space between the core and radiator of course) and putting the whole thing where our stock IC is. This way the scoop remains functional and should look nice and clean. Not sure where to put the reserviour though.

-- Ed

Then you'd be dealing with the same problems associated with TMICs, Heat Soak from the engine. If you position the rad. in the Front of the car, then you greatly reduce the amount of heat soak. You just need a bigger water pump to overcome the added friction loss.

Blue

I would suggest to look at a Vortech installation of one of their superchargers. They use AWICs almost exclusively. Their kits almost always tend to be compact....particularly on their Honda Civic kits.

50 lbs added to the car. i am not counting the front mount i had before. if i did then it would only be 20 lbs more. lets see now.

2 gallon resovour 20lbs
2 water pumps 3 lbs
lines and fittings 3 lbs
air/water intercooler w/water in it 15lbs

okay, you had me worried there.

I saw some pics of the Easystreet car (or another very similar setup) on the 'Rim of the world' report, it looked to have the intake pipe go into the cabin, into a big air/water cooler?

One nice thing about the air/water setup, is the water rad will generally give less flow loss to the main engine rad than a comparable FMIC core.

Paul