Wo-Nelly

I'm considering switching over to a liquid to air, but I just want to find out a bit more on it. How would this setup hold up in a daily driven street car? I assume you would need a heat exchanger correct? Also, do you need to different tunes, sy 1 for daily driving, with just water. And the second with ice for special occasions?

Garcia-Racing

I don't think so. The water gets heated up so fast it would lose its ability to cool in a matter of minutes. Stick with air-to-air.

drumking15

actaully if you did some research youd learn a air/water w/ a decent heat exchanger would be somewhat comparible to a decent air/air...search for racerxdam's post and his setup...there is some good datalogs of his setup and how efficent it really is...

overall reasons for air/water:
sleeperness
ice cold iat's at the track
different then the average joe for a/w intercooling

Sunrise City Rider

Older Subaru Legacy's use a Air/Water cooler with heat exchanger, the ST165 and ST205 Celica Alltracs use an Air/Water Cooler with Heat Exchangers...Just need a quality setup...

Agtronic

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=819020

Charles B.

"SiR Kid" is the first one that comes to mind when its comes to liquid to air setups for the street.

1316130057

You could easily run an Air/Water/Air IC on a street car all day every day. You'll need the pump and resivoir, but keep in mind that the efficiency of the AWA cooler after short running time becomes considerably higher than an Air/Air due to water's inability to release heat as readily as air can.

I used to have all the numbers but that was years ago. Long story short, after 3-4 minutes, the temp of water in the AWAIC is higher than ambient temps. Unless you run icewater and/or another cooling method, you'll always be at a loss compared to an AAIC and the longer the run-time, the more disproportionate it gets.

If you're looking for a straight strap-on set up, you could probably buy one of Vortech's AWAIC kits and plumb it. Don't forget the hp it takes to turn the AWAIC's water pump.

BTW, it's not "Air-Water" because the compressed air runs to the water via the cooler, then back to air again to get cooled, hence Air-Water-Air. With that in mind, you may have noticed that AWAIC's are still cooled by air, so why go through the middleman?

SiR Kid

I'v just posted my dyno numbers... Efficiency of my small core intercooler started to fall off at 10 PSI with an SC34, but on a homemade turbo setup, or just about any t3 turbo, my setup would make for an AWESOME sleeper car. It was ok up to 14 psi, but on pump gas, we didn't want to go further, IAT's started to become an issue.

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=872740

Pics of the setup are in my f/s post...

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=873082

Agtronic

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 1316130057 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I used to have all the numbers but that was years ago. Long story short, after 3-4 minutes, the temp of water in the AWAIC is higher than ambient temps. Unless you run icewater and/or another cooling method, you'll always be at a loss compared to an AAIC and the longer the run-time, the more disproportionate it gets.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Okay, I'm not an engineer, so my question is, would running an extra big heat exchanger remedy this problem?

I have spoken to a guy on the VWVortex who runs a PWR 4x6 on his 2.0L 8V Jetta, and he says that even after a HARD highway pull, his intercooler, lines and reservoir are all cool to the touch ...

drumking15

yes for the most part a water/air setup should be for a drag setup....but w/ the proper setup you should be able to create the same effects of an air/air....yes it involves more work parts etc...but personally i love the sleeper effect of it all...all the pwr coolers are decent but the spearco's are where its at...the one si kid ran was rather small like he said...efficenty started to cut off around 10psi....i plan on runnin a larger cooler...smaller than the double ones drag racers are using....should get decent iat's and support my 400whp flow needs

SiR Kid

We're checking into the efficiency problems with my intercooler now... We THINK there might be an air bubble in the intercooler core itself keeping the cooling effect from being as helpful as possible, because the intercooler is the highest point in my system, and it doesn't have a bleeder.

Whoops. I guess my engineer had a bad day.

1316130057

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Agtronic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Okay, I'm not an engineer, so my question is, would running an extra big heat exchanger remedy this problem?

I have spoken to a guy on the VWVortex who runs a PWR 4x6 on his 2.0L 8V Jetta, and he says that even after a HARD highway pull, his intercooler, lines and reservoir are all cool to the touch ... </TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes, a core with more volume will definitely improve cooling, but to get water to flow across it, you may need to kick it up a notch in the water pump. If the water isn't pumped through the whole system fast enough, you'll always be playing a game of catch-up. If it flows too fast, you won't have enough time to cool it. As you already know, mechanical pumps take hp to operate. Enter: Diminishing returns.

drumking15

ya some kid spoke of flow charateristics....he was a designer for computer heat sinks...he explained a lot about pump head pressure and actually flow charateristics and how they;d effect the iat's....


the only way i can think of...is to fill it from one of you inlets of you air/water intercooler from a hose held high....then connect everything up...let it run for a few seconds....then take the hose off and repeat