ACCURATEin

Allright guys. The time has come.

Versus Motorsports front bumper for the TL features an air dam large enough to accomodate for an intercooler. The bumper is on backorder at the moment and at the same time i'm thinking of testing out an air to air front mount IC in conjunction with the Comptech SC. Some of the CL guys have already pioneered this realm so its not the first time its been done.

Does anyone have any experience with intercoolers and knowledge about what piping size, etc?

I do know that the shortest route in the piping from the intercooler to the charger would be optimum.

To me it seems pretty simple...Intercooler and then a pipe straight to the cold air intake.

??? Input please! againstallodds i know you'll be with me on this haha.

lookinco

I am in this for sure, but I have no knowledge regarding intercoolers

I hate cars

2.5" pipe after the blower will support ~550hp. I'm not exactly sure what you meant by running a pipe from the blower to the cold air intake. It goes cold air to the blower to the intercooler to the motor. With a blower instead of a turbo you might get a slight loss in boost. The car will still make more power but you might want to offer a smaller blower pulley with the IC kit to bring boost back up.

dan.....k

iTrader: (1)

I'm interested.

bigman

There you go, put that bumper to good use. A FMIC would look great there.

againstallodds1

Yea we are going to have to get this to happen.
Definately. Especially now that Ryan is getting a smaller upper pulley made.
When I get my lower pulley, I will have Ryan take my upper one off and take measurements so he can send them to his guys to get them made.

As far as the FMIC, all you have to do is remove the elbow where the MAP sensor is, and get some piping made to run from the blower to the intercooler back to the intake manifold.

againstallodds1

Yea we are going to have to get this to happen.
Definately. Especially now that Ryan is getting a smaller upper pulley made.
When I get my lower pulley, I will have Ryan take my upper one off and take measurements so he can send them to his guys to get them made.

As far as the FMIC, all you have to do is remove the elbow where the MAP sensor is, and get some piping made to run from the blower to the intercooler back to the intake manifold.

Then we need to get a hood with a heat exchanger on it to get rid of the extra heat in the motor.

invincible569

I forgot where i got this from.. but here are some ideas from a similiar car (turbo accord):

invincible569

Or you can get one like this where it comes out on one side only:

BustedJack

If you make it happen Eric, I'm sure alot of us with superchargers will go for it

DeansblackCLS

Not to disappoint anyone, but the S/C does not produce enough boost to support a front mount style aftercooler. You will end up losing more boost and, therefore, losing power. Even with an increase in boost presure (smaller pulley) the front mount will end up losing everything you may have gained and then some due to the piping from the S/C to the cooler and from the cooler to the throttlebody.

There was a lot of talk about doing this for the 2nd gen CL/TL and this is what came of it. If you can convince Scalbert to do an aftercooler for the 3rd gen like he did for the 2nd's, then it would be killer.

Sorry guys/gals

ussi

iTrader: (1)

i'm interested.

I hate cars

That's completely false.

Even if you lose 1.5psi you will still have more power. You will probably lose nothing through the 2.5" piping. You lose a very, very slight amount due to the restriction of the IC, and most will come from the cooler discharge hence pressure drop. Once you find out what the pressure drop will be, you can make a pulley accordingly. Please don't post false info.

OMP Prelude

i think it would be better for the supercharged tl's to run a water to air intercooler shorter distance lot less boost lost, but the FMIC is a pimp factor . im going to have some kind of intercooler when ever my supercharger kit shows up then i will have more pics

I hate cars

Water to air sucks on the street for a street car. It's usually used on street cars where it's not possible to run the piping for an air to air, or a roots/eaton bolted directly to the intake manifold. Not nearly as efficient unless you're packing it with ice and driving very short distances.

Again, you guys worry way too much about the length of the piping. A couple extra feet will make 0 difference.

Atrain

I hate cars,

.

This is an opinion and I disagree with it. The air-to-air set-up is more efficient than an air-to-water set-up. To say it "sucks" for a street car is a blanket statement.

Ford used the air-to-air set-up for the 1989-1995 T-Bird SC (3.8L OHV V-6 with an Eaton M90 blower). However, they also switched to the air-to-water set-up for the 1999-2004 Ford F-150 Lightning (5.4L SOHC V-8 with an Eaton M112 blower) and the 2003-2004 Mustang Cobra (4.6L DOHC V-8 with an Eaton M112 blower). Then again for the Ford GT (5.4L DOHC V-8 with an Eaton M112 blower).

Now the Mustang has very little room to run the air-to-air system, but the F-150 Lightning could have had the system. The Ford GT was built from scratch and the engineers stayed away from the air-to-air set-up. You would think the GT supercar would have the air-to-air system since it performs the task of king of the road and king of the track. Yet it doesn't.

One 90 degree bend is worth 15 feet of straight pipe...yes that's right. The length of pipe does matter with an air-to-air set-up and I agree for the amount of boost that the TL's guys will be running this conversation is moot. There is some warrant to running the air-to-water system even for the street.

A-Train

blk2001tlon19s

There is a guy in the 2gen cl forums with a show car that has a fmic with his comptech supercharger. I forgot this user name however I'm sure he can provide some insite however I'm not sure if he dynoed his car or anything because he has a show car.

I hate cars

I've run both and the air to water can't touch the air to air except maybe the first 5 minutes before everything gets heatsoaked. I've got logs of my friend's Typhoon and once you get the water hot it never gets down to ambient or even close. I'm sure the Ford engineers chose what they did for packaging reasons, maybe even cost. It's extremely rare to see a roots or eaton blower with an air to air. Along those lines they could've turbocharged the 03-04 Cobra and made even more power but they didn't.

One 90 degree bend might be worth 15' of pipe restriction wise, but with the relatively low power levels of the TL you will never see a loss. When talking about the length of piping, most worry about overall volume causing a problem which it doesn't, at least with the super short runs the TL would have.

CleanCL

iTrader: (4)

you guys can argue theory all you want, but that doesnt mean crap. someone just needs the balls to go and try it.

I hate cars

I've done this a few times before. Not with a TL but I've been around supercharged/turbo cars for a lot of years. I currently run my Grand National with about 16' of 3" piping for a huge intercooler and I have ~1.5psi pressure drop from the outlet of the turbo to the intake manifold. Also no lag issues whatsoever. I've had friends intercool their low boost supercharged cars and believe me it makes a difference.

I admit a water/air intercooler is much better than nothing. Just remember you still have to have water hoses, a pump, and a heat exchanger. My only suggestion is if someone takes that route, give it a big enough reservior to pack with a couple pounds of ice for the track.

CleanCL

iTrader: (4)

i guess i should have specified... someone needs to do it on a 3G TL. otherwise everything else is just theory. your grand national has a 1.5 pressure drop... but does it have the same motor as the TL, and for that motor does it use the same blower? each blower has diff characteristics. i dont need to tell you this. i say go and try it!

I hate cars

I get what you're saying and I want someone to actually do it too. The GN made 3x more hp than the TL. My point was that there's only 1.5psi drop with that kind of airflow. It gets frustrating when people make assumptions based off of no real world experience like saying the IC will make it lose power due to restriction. A motor is a motor, the TL is nothing special so it's pretty easy to predict how it will work.

CleanCL

iTrader: (4)

yup, they just need the high boost pulley and the intercooler will do wonders.

Atrain

CleanCL,

First of all the GN is turbocharged. Second, boost is made when you flow air through a restriction. The more boost you have, the more cork in the system. You don't want boost, you want air flow.

Just get a high boost pulley? Is that how it works?


I hate cars,

Ok agreed.

As for my air-to-water unit I only had a 3/4 gallon capacity to start with so you can imagine how quickly the system became heat soaked. I added a 4-gallon fuel cell to the trunk and dual intercooler pumps (Bosch). I found the ACT (air charge temps) climbed to the same point, 170 degrees F. at WOT with 9-psi of boost. That was on a 90 degree F. day. With the extra intercooler fluid the temps still reached 170, but they didn't continue to heat soak and rise over that point.

I also was amazed to see the ACT's on a 30 degree day as they wouldn't climb over 70 degrees F. The boost also shot up to 11-psi due to the cold dense air.

Air-to-water is better than nothing at all.





A-Train

RYAN97812

iTrader: (2)

Atrain, not to get off subject but is that island dragway? I know its not etown or atco. My neighbors uncle opened that track.

Atrain

RYAN97812,

I used to run at E-Town all the time, but I just got sick of all the waiting. Now we (Mustang/T-Bird club) rent Cecil for a Saturday and run as often as we want. It's $50.00 a person which isn't all that bad.

I've been to Island, but I never raced there...I'm terrified of the shutdown area.

It's always fun to take the stock looking T-Bird down the track and spank a few Mustang's and even a few Corvettes.

A-Train

againstallodds1

A-Train, what kind of blower do you have on the T-Bird?

Kennedy

iTrader: (2)

Has anyone done the analysis to determine the temperature difference of the air pre and post SC to see if an IC will even do anything. Is the heat from comression (at 4lbs) even there?

First,
It appears many here have no idea what an intercooler does. The IC sits between the pressurized outlet of the SC and the intake manifold inlet. When air is compressed, it get hotter. Hot air is not as dense as cold air, thus cooling down the pressurized charge allows more air into the flow of the system. more air = more fuel. More air/fuel = more power. Simple concept.

Intercooling has drawbacks though. Intercooler performance, pressure drop, and boost lag are all considerations.

First
An IC is going to do nothing but REDUCE the performance of your supercharger... end of story. Props to "looking pimp" but getting slower in the process.

1) Boost lag - Before the ECU can begin to dump more fuel into the system, it has to WAIT for the air pressure to be built up in the "pressure system". In the stock SC, the pressure system is a simple tube between the SC and the manifold... It doesn't take long to fill that with pressurized air.
The impeller design of the SC is different than a turbo... It'll take a lot longer to build pressure in the system. When you introduce all that ductwork and a big honkin' IC that now that will have to be pressurized, serious boost lag will occur.

You'll stomp it, and it'll hesitate/smoke for a second or two while the pressure builds in the system... It's kinda funny to drive a car with a lot of boost lag.

2) Pressure drop - Pushing that pressurized air through the IC system takes force. The more plumbing/IC mesh you have, the more pressure you'll lose. (combined with boost lag). You've now intoduced a component that reduces SC spool up time and reduces it's available pressure due to the additional resistance.

3) Those big honkin IC are VERY overrated. Most you see in the VW world, where the 1.8Turbo lives, and they are WAY TOO BIG for the engine. For all the performance gains they hurt, all they really help is the "light to light" heat soak of the intake system.

You are seriously barkin up the wrong tree on this. By all mean, you guys have a "look" you're trying to accomplish, and you'll probably pursue it... but don't expect anything but lost power from this one.

You'd be much better served putting that money towards a serious turbo project, WITH intercooler.

I hate cars

From what I remember this blower at 5psi heats the air up ~100 degrees over ambient. A decent intercooler should bring this down to within 20 degrees of ambient. This is obviously not a certrifugal compressor so it heats the air a little more than a turbo or Vortech style blower. I see what you're saying and if the blower only heats the air like 50 degrees then I agree with you, the intercooler won't do much. Personally I would never pay the money for a 4psi kit on an 11:1 motor in the first place.

I don't, however think a normal sized intercooler with some 2.5" plumbing will produce any lag. I've gone from no intercooler to a giant frontmount with 16' of plumbing and it sounds crazy but there was no difference in lag. Granted this was a turbo car but my stock turbo flowed about the same as the blower for the TL.

The problem I see is the throttlebody will have to be post intercooler. If this is not done, you will have the hesitation, smoking, and basic drivability problems you described.

ACCURATEin

I believe you're talking about Essaraks red CL. He has the intercooler mounted in the front but i'm not sure if he actually had pipes connected to it.. I think it might have been strictly for show.

ACCURATEin

Thanks for everyones input about intercoolers. I don't have too much experience with them and now i have a better idea of the reality behind the situation.

I have a few ideas of a design for the piping and IC placement. It's gonna take some ingenuity.

Kennedy

iTrader: (2)

Mounting a non functioning intercooler to the front of your car... is by far the :ghey:est thing you could ever do.
To go with it, you should buy the "blow off valve" sound emulator to make your Acura "sound" like it has a turbo.

ACCURATEin

He actually did have a HKS SSBV welded to the elbow before the intake manifold.

It looks cool though,...you gotta admit!

Kennedy

iTrader: (2)

I'm old school I guess. I believe in making my car perform better, not making it look like it performs better...

Atrain

againstallodds1,

I use the Eaton M90 S-Ported blower which is a GEN-III type with a by-pass valve.

Visit Allen Supercharger's Custom page...

The blower "kit" is from Allen Superchargers which built kits for the '96-'04 Mustang, '92-'05 Crown Vic, '94-'95 T-Bird/Cougar & '96-'97 T-Bird & Cougar. All the kits were based around the use of the 4.6L V-8 SOHC engine that Ford used widely in most of their cars. All their kits are air-to-water intercooled and CARB exempt.

The T-Bird made 165 RWHP/232 RWTQ (SAE) on a dynojet when it was bone stock. PATHETIC by today's standards. With the Allen Supercharger blower kit and eliminating their fmu controller the T-Bird made 275 RWHP/335 RWTQ (SAE) on the same dynojet. So with 6-psi of boost I picked up 110 RWHP and 103 RWTQ (SAE).

The car went from low 16's in the 1/4 mile to high 13's. It wasn't until I added the 2000 Mustang GT 4.6L engine with the PI heads/PI cams (9.0:1 CR) that the car made 325 RWHP/380 RWTQ and ran the best of 12.74 @ 109.45 mph. That's with a 4-speed automatic and 3,950 lbs. of car.

I've spent numerous years working with a Ford engineer (now president of SCT) on tuning these cars. I've seen controlled experiement data from Roush Racing on the Eaton M90 and Eaton M112 blowers. Not local dyno tests that attempt to sell you a product.

A-Train

Atrain

Kennedy,

I agree with you and I'd like to comment on my experiences with an Eaton M90
S-Ported blower and an air-to-water I/C set-up on my 4.6L SOHC V-8 T-Bird.

First let's talk thermodynamics law. Whenever you compress air you heat it (PV=nRT). There is no way around this and more heat means less spark and less air density. What determines power output of any gasoline engine is how efficient it burns fuel. Air is a limiting factor in power output, however you cannot just burn pure gasoline. An ideal air fuel ratio must be met. Since the chemically correct formula for heptane is 14.64:1, the stoich A/F ratio would be 14.64:1. Some people say 14.7:1 and that's fine.

Almost every supercharged engine is knock constrained even with an intercooler.
There are mainly 4 things that control knock sensitivity in an engine. Fuel octane (octane does NOT change the burn rate of the A/F mixture), combustion chamber design, cylinder pressure and A/F mixture temperature.

So the A/F ratio must be richened to cool of some of the combustion chamber temperature. 14.64:1 is stoich so 15:1 is lean and 14:1 is rich...let's move on.

Most fuel injected and pollution controlled vehicles will run very rich at WOT. This is done to protect the catalytic converters for the most part. The closer the cats are to the engine, the faster they lite off and the hotter they will be since the exhaust gases exiting the engine have no chance to cool off before the reach the cats. Catalytic converters work at a certain temperature and after this temp they start to break down and melt.

On a side note, the newer cars (especially those stating TLEV or ULEV) switch to closed loop as quickly as 30 seconds after start-up. That tells you something about how efficient the exhaust is to the cats.

To prevent this from happening, most OEM auto makers run very rich at WOT. I've seen 2003 Mustang Mach 1's run 11.5:1 at 6,200 rpm at WOT...from the factory. That is very rich...but it keeps things from breaking.

I concur.

Yes and no. From experiment and data collection I've found that even an I/C core in the intake itself does less damage for boost lag then more plenum volume. In fact, the Eaton supercharger does very little compression inside it's housing. It actually paddles air flow from inlet to outlet and most of the air charge compression occurs between the rotors outlet and the intake manifold. This is what makes the Eaton so efficient at low blower rpms and low boost levels.

The Eaton M90 is 65% adiabatic efficient at 4-5 psi of boost. Increasing the boost to 8-9 psi drops the efficiency to 50%. 12-14 psi makes things worse, around 40%. In other words, at 13 psi you will be making 60% unwanted HOT air and 40% useful air flow. Diminishing returns!

In one controlled test case, increasing the plenum volume by adding a 1" plenum spacer (CNC machined from jig plate) dropped power down low and boost as well. However, at redline (6,200 rpm), the Eaton M90 was still producing power. Without the additional plenum volume, the boost stayed constant until the higher rpms when it fell off, unable to supply the CNC ported heads of the test engine. Down low, there was no dip in power or boost "lag".

Yes, but not on a TL and not with an Eaton M62. Let's look at some data from a Roush Stage-III Mustang GT with an Eaton M90 blower. The tests were done in a controlled Roush Racing test lab with an ambient air of 78 degrees F.

At 14,000 rpm blower speed, 608 cfm air flow @ 12-psi of boost the M90 made 314 degrees F. discharge temperatures. The power to turn the supercharger was 48 HP.

The same blower at 14,000 rpm blower speed, 608 cfm of air flow and only 6-psi of boost made 217 degree F. discharge temps and the power to turn the supercharger was only 33 HP.

Using the air-to-water intercooler raised the boost from 6-psi of boost to 7-psi and the discharge temps dropped to 138 degrees F. That's an 80 degree reduction at 5-psi with an air-to-water system. Remember, you don't want boost, you want air flow.

Tout = Tin + Tin X (Pout/Pin 0.263-1) over blower efficiency

Tout = Calculated Discharge air temperature.

The ideal roots-hybrid blower spins the snot out of the blower, has lots of air flow and little to no boost. Remember, you don't want boost, you want air flow. Cool dense air flow! The denser the air flow, the more oxygen present and the more fuel that can be mixed in for more power.

Amen to that. However the truth is intercooling is better than nothing at all. The reasons are simple, most cars that run I/C's can add more spark timing and increase power production since the engine isn't as knock constrained. You will see that many of the GM cars that are Eaton M90 supercharged (3.8L OHV V-6) do not have intercoolers and they make only 240-250 HP because of this.

I disagree with you here. It really depends on the supercharger type, the intercooler type, the engine, the state of tune and among other factors ambient temps.

Perhaps with a turbocharged engine and a seriously long I/C track. This just would not happen with an Eaton supercharger.



I have mountains of paperwork in front of me about fluid dynamics and we can talk pressure drops all day long if you want.

.

Yes and no again. In the Eaton M90 or M112 case with a close proximity air-to-water I/C system, boost pressure increases with the I/C unit and there is no "boost lag". All things being equal, the M62 would react the same way.



Regards,

A-Train

ThinJim

iTrader: (3)

It seems you have no idea who this guy is and what your talking about. His fmic is functional. He is sponsered buy every vendor out there and his car wins awards at every car show he attends. He is not into it for the performance. It is one very well built car.

as for the air to air, i wouldn't suggest it. It is better suited to turbo. the water/air works and it has been done on the j series motor. Scalbert made the IC for the CL and produced 369 whp with it. the object with using an IC with a supercharger is to keep the manifold pipes as short as possible since boost on a SC is dependant on RPM.

Kennedy

iTrader: (2)

You're right, I don't know what I'm talking about... My comments we're based on Acurattein's statement that it was nonfunctional...

Doesn't look functional in those pictures. It looks like he's watercooling up top. You should see some piping in the side vents of the bumper.

As point of reference for those point for those intested in an Intercooler for thier SC... Get your checkbooks out too. I went through two different SMICs (Side Mount Inter Coolers) and 2 different FMICs (Front Mount Inter Coolers) on my last 4thGen VW. The SMICs were $500-$600 and the FMICs we're $900-$1100... and none of them gave me any significant gains. BIG TURBOS need FMICs.

If you got $1100 to spend on pretending you have a turbo, please call me.

Kennedy

iTrader: (2)

First, it's refreshing to read the post of "someone" who knows "something" "about something". It's been a long time since I've crunched thermodynamic and fluid dynamic equations. I'm an Mechnaical Engineer by trade, but the Marines made me a communications nerd... which resulted in a career path as a scum of the earth Federal contractor in IT...

Needless to say, I have no arguement with any of your statements. I was attempting to keep my limited knowledge of forced induction at the simplest level considering most here think a FMIC as more bumper candy than a performance enhancer.

All I was implying was than at air to air front mount IC, with all that crazy plumbing will not yield optimum performance of you IC... In fact, said design is likely to decrease performance.

With proper design and testing, some form of IC would certainly increase performance. I believe there's a watercooled injection kit (from snow performance) already on the market (and some are using here), but it doesn't offer the visual appeal that many here seem to want.

The ricey'r the better it seems. If it don't scream EVO killer by the way it looks, it ain't done.

I hate cars

I would bet money that's a water/air intercooler that's part of the intake manifold on that motor. Which leads us back to why does that guy have a frontmount also? I highly doubt it's functional.