Found these while searching for intercoolers






basically its a liquid to air intercooler that goes somewhere in between your turbo/SC and your engine.

Looks like a pretty cool design that also looks quite compact. I wonder how well it cools though...



heres the little description of it:

PWR's All-Aluminum Liquid-to-Air Intercoolers are oven braze, 100% TIG welded and have 18 fins per inch. PWR's Intercoolers are a unique extruded tube and fin design that minimizes pressure drop and reduces spooling time. These Barrel intercoolers have 3/4" barb liquid line fittings. To select the proper intercooler for your application: (1.) Chose the appropriate diameter based on CFM needed. (2.) Select the longest intercooler based on available space, to obtain the densest air charge.

http://www.absoluteradiator.com/Intercoolers.asp
on about the middle of the page.

Prices are not bad too! So whos gonna be the guinnea pig for this intercooler??

 

Brad had purchased one of these to try out. I had also looked into these even making a model of it to try and fit it in. But in the end It turns out that there isn't enough room to easily fit this in place and still attach to the stock manifold.

In addition, due to the increased volume which would be required to get it to fit, response would diminish.

The smallest one we could have used was 15 inches in length. Just try measuring from the SC outlet back and see where 15 inches ends; it is near the firewall.

I thought about making a different SC outlet assembly and using this core. But in the end I found that the costs would have be similar to what I did. Add to that the increased volume required to fill and I chose a different route.

 

Ahhhhh.

I thought I had found something that nobody had seen or considered before. Glad to know you guys have been exploring all options


I was considering using it when I get my blower up and running which will not be for another month or two and by that time phoenix will be a sweltering 110 degrees!!

Do you know how these barrel intercoolers compare as far as efficiency to a plate and fin air to air intercooler or air to water???

It seems like a very efficient design. I would be interested to see what the inside of it looks like whether it is just copper tubing wrapped around the air duct...

 

Steve, COULD this be made to work for my application? I am trying very hard to find a intercooler design that I can utilize. Would this be worth looking into or did you think that the vortech power cooler would be more feasible to fit/fabricate? Thanks, good find AK_Mobber

 

From what I undersatnd they are fairly efficient but I have no real personal experience. I have seen some in some pictures of cars and the whole layout looked fine which lends to the usefulness of them. I certainly hope it is not some copper coils in there. :o

But I do see more Spearco or Bell cores being used on serious cars though.

 

With some metal fabrication/sheet metal work you could have a new blower outlet made. This would open up room for a standard core. From there your best bet would be a standard Vortech, Spearco or Bell assembly.

The barrel style would still be a stretch as it has two ends and is fairly long.

 

Good stuff!! I still wish we had some concrete data on these though.... Isn't copper one of the best metals at transferring thermal energy (besides silver)??

It is purely speculation but maybe it is a plate and fin design inside the tube like a conventional intercooler???
Maybe brad can chime in with what the inside composition looks like...

I just figured the cold water went in and spiraled around the incoming superheated air to absorb heat...

Anyway its a pretty interesting design that really gets your imagination running!!