internal intercooler?

[ezzzzzzz]

Many roots style SC'd engines use a water/air intercooler plate sandwiched between the blower and the intake manifold. I am considering fitting a two pass finned cooler (approx 3/4x2x24) in the plenum for my SC'd L28. The plenum will be made from an extruded 'D' tube supplied by Ross Machine. The supercharger bolts directly to a fixed mount on the outside of the plenum. My thoughts were to fit a cooler (such as shown but without the brackets) within the plenum. With that mount I would have two options. Either mount it center where air could flow through and around it or create a barrier, top and bottom, so all air was forced through the cooler fins. This cooler would be fed antifreeze by a small pump and used in conjuction with a larger cooler out front in the grill area. Since this is L28 is force-fed, I don't think the internal cooler would greatly inhibit flow. The fins would also serve to lineate the air flow into the runners. Any thoughts of the feasibility of this idea?

[Xnke]

I'd take advantage of anything you can get. hell, load it with freon and run A/C on the intake if you have to, that'd drop those intake temps fast

[Nizm0Zed]

as long as it is colder than the charge air temp, it'll work.

as for how eficciently? dunno.

 

Ideally you would want to run a gas through it, as the gas will run at a much lower temperature than a liquid, excluding if the gas IS in a liquid state.

maybe set it up as a A/C core? you should be able to source a small compact compressor, maybe off one of those tiny jap kei cars or a honda goldwing.

having such a small core, would only require a small core on the front of the car too.

i dont know if those extruded D pipes would handle the pressure though.

[ozconnection]

Good idea!

 

I would include some sort of boost and temperature switching device that could monitor temperature and boost and determine when it would be appropriate for the device to switch on and cool things down. You dont want to cool things down before they've had a chance to warm up.

 

Be careful that what you're proposing doesn't cause too much flow restriction. No good boosting an engine only to have it strangled by something like this.

 

Cheers.

[NCchris]

ezzzzzzz, this has been done, but it escapes me where I saw the pix. In "Maximum Boost" Corkey Bell discusses air-water intercoolers related to turbos, but much of his info could apply to superchargers as well. Plumbing could get complicated. Hasn't Ford done something like this with their supercharged Lightning Truck?

[Tony D]

yes, the ford lightning has the bosch water pump you will likely want to use for circulation of the coolant

[HowlerMonkey]

One thing to think of when deciding to make one out of an A/C evaporator is the velocity of the airflow.

 

I ran into the high velocity of the charged air either bending the fins flat or making them whistle like a blade of grass between one's thumbs.

[SHO-Z]

One thing you need to look at is residency time in the intercooler. The air need time to do its heat transfer. If you look at most intercoolers they are a lot longer than they are tall, looking at the flow direction. The longer the air is in the intercooler the more time it has to cool. You might want to look at some way to cool the supercharger also and to have the intake for it with cool air set up. I am doing a supercharged L6 with SK carbs and a Subaru intercooler.

[Tony D]

Given residency has come up, given high velocity, a thicker one pass cooler will work (think vortech cooler setup).

 

For instance, the A/C core of a 1974 Chevrolet Impala will satisfactorily cool a 300HP engine with an air velocity through it from around 140mph. Slower than that, you need a much larger cooler. But the A/C core will cool that engine just fine with that speed through that dense core very well.

 

Looking at evaporator cores as a one-pass affair, and then properly ducting the airflow through it properly will pay dividends.

[NCchris]

Another item that comes into play is the volume of the cooled transfer medium which is somewhat tied to the pumping capacity. You do not want to be pumping heated fluid into your intercooler. You are also going to need an efficient method of removing the heat from the medium (fluid?)