OlderThanMe Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I have been thinking about intercoolers (dangerous) and thought about mounting an intercooler in front of the main crossmember. I will be using a belly pan for my application. I am working on an intercooler design that can cool air temperature WAY better than a standard intercooler and be smaller. That is beside the point. Are there any problems with mounting the intercooler horizontal and running an air intake from the front or the bottom of the car through the intercooler, and then to the side of the car or back underneath? The intercooler will have more than 3x the cooling capability of a standard aluminium intercooler with less size. Just putting the idea of a non-FMIC out there. Take in mind that it can cool air way better than standard. It could be the ultimate sleeper... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeatRaveR Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 That sounds kinda like what Subarus do with their top mount intercoolers (horizontal mount with a duct). Though I would imagine that putting it on the bottom risks getting gummed up with road debris after awhile. I don't see how it would get 3x the cooling ability of a FMIC while being smaller, though. Can you elaborate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proxlamus© Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 you want air to flow THROUGH the intercooler... the air underneath the Z is a swirling mass of high pressure air.. i doubt it will get much flow.. unless you have some sort of front splitter, and a venturi/air tunnel forcing all the air through the intercooler I wouldnt recommend it. buy a FMIC .. and use some BLACK spray paint.. make it look stealthy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted August 17, 2006 Author Share Posted August 17, 2006 Well I don't really want to elaborate on how it cools. It uses other materials than aluminium though. Much more thremally conductive materials. Maybe I'll put this tiny intercooler up front to make it look wimpy... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 Hey OTM, good luck with the space age materials, but you probably don't want to mount it that close to the road. Ever try and lay your face on the road in the middle of the day? That air down there isn't all that cool is what I'm saying. You'd be better off doing it like porsche used to, and putting it in the fender behind the wheel with a screen over it to block debris. So long as you duct it appropriately it would work just fine. Make sure you have and entry and exit path figured out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datsun350Z Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 you want air to flow THROUGH the intercooler... the air underneath the Z is a swirling mass of high pressure air.. i doubt it will get much flow.. unless you have some sort of front splitter' date=' and a venturi/air tunnel forcing all the air through the intercooler I wouldnt recommend it. buy a FMIC .. and use some BLACK spray paint.. make it look stealthy[/quote'] My opinion: Black spraypaint = Good idea for stealth. Black spraypaint = Bad idea for cooling. There is a (might be semi-metallic?) spraypaint that is made specifically to paint intercoolers so the fins still cool properly. Public Opinion: I did a little research on this, pretty much everyone disagrees with me:confused:. All the forums say that a thin coat of regular spraypaint won't affect it. (Keep in mind... this information is coming from guys who think Wrx's And Srt-4's are fast:lmao:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 Supposedly black paint won't affect the cooling. Black absorbs heat quicker than other colors, but also radiates it just as fast, that's why the SR-71 is painted black to shed the heat generated by traveling at those speeds. In the book "Skunkworks" by Ben Rich, they talk about making that decision to paint the plane flat black instead of polishing it in order to help with the heat issue. If you are at all concerned about the effect of paint, go to www.swaintech.com and get one of the heat dump intercooler/radiator coatings done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjhines Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 LOL.... the SR-71 has black paint for several reasons... it is a radar absorbing "iron ball" paint (just like current stealth) and it is meant to fly AT NIGHT... but there were soo many other factors in painting that beast... you cannot attribute the color entirely to "heat" effects... gimmee a break... Black body radiation characteristics.... Google it... "black" both absorbs and radiates heat fastest.... NOT!!! to say that just any old black paint will radiate heat better than the bare surface... there are numerous different compounds that can be applied to various metals (many of them are anodized)... these heat radiating coatings bond to the metal in such a way that they are not acting as insulating coatings.. but heat transfer coatings... Many small air-cooled engines have heads and cylinders treated this way... but these coatings do not significantly change the overall heat dissipation of the engine... they are only worth the effort and cost to apply on high performance/expensive engines... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 That book was written by the guy that designed the engine nose cones for the blackbird, and went on to be the director of the Lockheed skunkworks during the stealth fighter plane design. I'll post the passage where he talks about that when I get home. The idea of visual camoflage on something traveling mach 3+ seems a little silly, don't you think? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarJway Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 Well, I can not top all the Information you guys have with the SR-71's paint, but I might have something close... Sport Compact Car had an article with some Dyno Plots and showing a few different scenarios of; What effect Spray Painting the Intercooler might have in a real world situation. As some stuff SHOULD work in theory, it sometimes doesn’t turn out that way. I will try to dig up the magazine, but if someone else read this, please chime in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I remember that test as well, and if I recall correctly, they determined that a thin coat of paint had no effect on the air temperature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cygnusx1 Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I'd love to see how anyone would effectively lay an even coat of paint in between and on the fins of an intercooler. The only way to do that would be to dip it. I bet if it were paint dip coated, you would see a fairly significant efficiency drop. I agree that quickly spraying on a light coat of paint on the forward facing surfaces will barely effect it's performance. How about black anodize? Intercooler under the car? Go ahead and try it. It's still better than no intercooler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted August 17, 2006 Author Share Posted August 17, 2006 well I have been thinking about it and... It would be a lot easier to make a duct from the front of the car (like the electramotive 280zx had) and put the smaller intercooler in the engine bay somewhere. Most likely next to the radiator. My space age materials (they really are) would allow you to put an intercooler anwhere on the car and still be way better than a regular intercooler mounted in the front of the car. The wheelwell like Veritech-Z was saying would be a cool idea. I could even make it mount right in-between the turbo and intake manifold to decrease lag... This may turn out to be some dumb idea but it could turn out great. How did the subject of SR-71's come up? The idea of a really fast car with no FMIC??? LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 That was me, sorry about that! I was using it as an example of black paint being used to shed heat in an extreme circumstance, and BJ wasn't buying it, and hilarity ensued... *edit*OTM, if you don't have it already, you should go pick up Maximum Boost by Corky Bell, it has a lot of cool pictures of different intercooler placement ideas (including a close up of the porsche intercooler I mentioned and also a bottom mount intercooler) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted August 17, 2006 Author Share Posted August 17, 2006 Hmm. I have heard a lot about that book so I'll probably go get it. No problem about the paint...Zs look mean flat black...then again they look mean dark candy blue... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 If you really wanted to be cool you could do a top mount, like I'm planning to do...except you could duct the airflow from the front so that it comes from under the intercooler and out the hood, instead of in from the hood scoop down into the engine bay... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted August 17, 2006 Author Share Posted August 17, 2006 That is a pretty cool idea. Only problem then is that you can't really see that big 'ol holset sitting down there...That may be a good thing though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 You probably aren't going to see it too much under the fuel injection intake manifold anyway. I'm really just doing it to be different, got to have a little WTF?! in your life, right? I'm also planning to put the turbo exhaust forward, and run my "downpipe" around the front so I can do my passenger side WWII fighter plane style exhaust in the fender. As for the reference I promised earlier from Skunkworks: page 202-204 describes the design team getting around the challenges of choosing materials to build the blackbird out of. Ben Rich (then a designer on the project) determined that painting the plane black would lower wing temperatures by 35 degrees which would allow them to use the lower grade titanium that was available at the time without having to worry about it losing strength from the heat. The impetus for this decision was the fact that the only supplier in the US that was milling sheets of titanium didn't have much in the way of quality control, and lowering the temperature gave them a buffer. According to Ben Rich, the only factor in using black paint was heat control, prior to that it was going to be polished. The radar absorbency was a side effect, but because it worked so well it made the transition to the F-117 program. However, later in the book, it is made very clear that the majority of the stealth capability of that plane was the shape of the fuselage, and only to an extremely lesser degree to the absorbency of the ferrous paint. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted August 17, 2006 Author Share Posted August 17, 2006 I have seen an SR-71 at the alabama NASA "base" and it is really cool. I guess it would beat an SR-20 any day of the week... I digress. Time to go make more sketches... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeatRaveR Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 Making the intercooler out of a more efficient material sounds great, but the reference to "space age" materials makes it sound like it'll be expensive.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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