Guest JAMIE T Posted March 18, 2003 Share Posted March 18, 2003 If any of you guys have paid any attention the the Pro Mustang racers in the last 5 years, you have no doubt seen the Vortech Igloo intake manifolds. It is essentailly a water to air IC as the intake plenum. I am thinking about making one for my L6. I would use it along with a low pressure drop Air to air(to pre cool the air). I could add ice water to it for drag racing, but still get acceptable performance under normal driving conditions. It would essentaily be a one time use IC. I'm not sure if the gains from the super-cooled air would outway the possible pressure drop. If it is designed properly, there may be no pressure loss from the Igloo intake. It's just an idea. Flame away! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randy 77zt Posted March 19, 2003 Share Posted March 19, 2003 this website is not about flaming.it is about original ideas .a z owner has to be original because there is no bolt on parts support like hondu's,mustangs.so get your tig welder out and get working.then show is the dyno run dry and with ice water.the import drag racers use ice chests with rv water pumps to cool the ic.they repack the ice every run. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JAMIE T Posted March 19, 2003 Share Posted March 19, 2003 I know it isn't about flaming, that is why I live here 8) . I happen to weld aluminum for a living(TIG, MIG, etc...) I am hoping to get started soon on the intake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drax240z Posted March 20, 2003 Share Posted March 20, 2003 Jamie, it is a neat idea, I only see one point that causes some concern. (other than fabrication details, but it sounds like you are capabile in that area) To achieve effecient heat transfer from the cool intake, to the air you must have a high surface area for heat transfer, lots of turbulance, and a large temperature difference. I see a slight problem, in that ideally as far as flow rates are concerned, you'd like your intake to be smooth on the inside, and not to induce high amounted of turbulance. (which isn't always the case in a carb'd setup) I'm assuming for this trouble you are running a turbo/injection. To achieve a high rate of heat transfer, you basically want the inside of your intake to look like a radiator. Lots of fins, lots of surface area, lots of turbulance most likely. However, to achieve a high rate of airflow, you want the exact opposite situation in your intake manifold. It would be an interesting experiment. Off the top of my head I'd say you'd see more gain in low and mid-range power than top end. However, if you don't rough up your intake walls significantly, I'm not sure you'll see much effect at all as far as temperature drops in the intake charge. My 2 cents. I'd love to see it attempted and hear about some results! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DaneL24 Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 I like the idea of using ice to cool the intercooler. The thing that I don't like about this intercooler/manifold hybrid is that it sounds like it uses engine coolant...just because its an intake manifold. And engine coolant, while it is a fluid coolant, is actually very warm. Not what you want to cool your intake air, actually used to warm the intake air. Maybe I'm confused about what you meant though. Heres what I would do. Use the ice intercooler idea, and mount the intercooler in front of the turbo, so the plumbing would be reversed. This would work just because the air would be cooled so much before it reached the turbo. Then you could plumb the turbo directly to the TB and intake manifold. The result would be that the turbo would have a very little volume to pressurize, so you would have a faster boost response, just because the turbo doesn't have to fill up a big intercooler and lots of pipes with air to pressurize the intake. Then you could put in some manually operated valves to reverse the plumbing again when you aren't using ice in the intercooler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest shuyun Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 It sounds like you want to use a secondary cooling system. Is the pourpouse of the system to put a air to water heat exchanger in the front of the car then use a water to air heat exchanger in the intake? What about an heat exhanger that you pack with dry ice. It would need a pressure release to bleed of the gas as the dry ice change to a gas or you could use the gas as the heat exchanger medium; dump 5 lb of dry ice into a pressure vessel and use the gas generated to cool the heat exchanger. With the idea of a one pass inter cooler you could pack the dry ice filled inter coolers in a ice chest and cool them down to -75 deg F and install one per pass. I get dry ice at the local ice factory at about $1.00 US a pound so the question is the extra hp worth the dry ice vs ice. This sound like fun let me know what you decide. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JAMIE T Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 The set-up I want to do has nothing to do with engine coolant. It is a totally seperate system. Drag racers use these to make max HP during short 1/4 mile blasts. I will try to find pics of a Vortech Igloo, so that it may help clarify. Basicaly, it is a water to air IC that can be packed with ice. It would have no less flow than any other type of intercooler. I can't see why it would have poorer flow charectoristics just becuase it is after the throttle body. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim240z Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 Jamie, How about a water:air intercooler, with a 12volt pump, pumping water through an ice bath (something similar to the fuel cooler cans). You could put the ice bath in the back of the car and run 3/4 inch water lines (copper would be good?) to the front of the car. Is that what you're thinking of doing? Tim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JAMIE T Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 http://headlesshorsemenracing.netfirms.com/hhrnews1.html This is a site that has a few pics of what I'm talking about. It uses a tank to hold the water(or ice and water) in and a pump(bilge pump) to push the chilled water into intake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JAMIE T Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 Yes Tim exactly, but the IC is also the intake plenum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim240z Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 Yes Tim exactly, but the IC is also the intake plenum. Jamie, I can see two obstacles to consider: 1: The intake plenum is very near the exhaust manifold, so the amount of water in the system would need to be large to soak up that heat and not super heat the water 2: The air in teh intake doesn't hang around for very long (before getting sucked into the cylinders), not long enough, I would think, to shed much of it's heat. Does that sound right? Tim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SleeperZ Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 To add to what Tim said... The IC built after the throttle body should have a substantial cross-sectional area to flow the intake through - you need to reduce the velocity of the air so it can give up more of it's heat and not increase the resistance to flow - basic intercooler design. This aspect is well described in "Maximum Boost". But also I think you would not want to reduce the volume of your plenum by filling it up with fins - this could affect the breathing from what I hear - the plenum volume needs to be larger than your displacement by 50% or so. It sounds like a tricky thing to implement and have work well. The weblink shows a very large intercooler atop the V8 intake - if you could combine two L28 intakes, one on top of the other, one of them an intercooler, the other a normal plenum, you might get some interesting results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JAMIE T Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 Nathen, my plenum would be all new, not made up of stock parts. I have "Maximum Boost", it may be the best automotive book I've ever read. The intake in the link is a water to air IC/Plenum(notice the TB is BEFORE the IC/Plenum) atop a Ford GT40 lower intake. It is made by Vortech for Professional 5.0 Mustang racing. Apparently it works, well. Bell's book say's the plenum should be 50-70% larger than an engines cylinder displacement. I think I can pull that off. If it doesn't work, well then, I'll just build a differant intake. I do this sort of thing becuase it helps us all learn, and I like to build cool stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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