intercooler questions.. again

thats big

 

ssautocrome.....shiney stuff on a budget

Plenty Big, I think the term they used was HUGE :lol:

When I was investigating intercoolers I thought water to air would work better but Mafix has convinced me that ATA is better for the street.

So I think a FMIC can look killer in the front of the car and I wanted to stick the biggest intercooler I could find up there but after investigating a bit further I found out that turbo lag can be greatly increased if you put to big an intercooler up front.

If you compare the stock WTA ST165 intercooler to the SSautochrome intercooler plus 5-6' of 3" pipe your going to have maybe 5 or 6 times the volume of air between the turbo and the intake manifold so running the SSautochrome setup the turbo is going to take alot longer to deliver boosted intake air to the intake manifold, thus increasing the turbo lag greatly.

I am guessing that at the most their is about 1/2 cubic foot of air volume between the turbo and the intake manifold on a stock WTA ST165 setup.

Volume of air in 6' of 3" (.25') pipe
Volume = (pi)*radius^2 * height
Volume = 3.14...*.25^2*6
Volume = 1.18 cubic feet

Volume of SSautochrome Intercooler (4" thick 24" long core 12" high)
Volume = 0.333 * 2 * 1
Volume = 0.666 cubic feet but the intercooler has fins so lets say only half of that volume can actually hold boosted air, so the volume of the intercooler would be 0.333 cubic feet.

So the SS autochrome setup has 1.51 cubic feet of air between the turbo and the intake manifold, and if the stock setup has 1/2 cubic foot of air then turbo lag will be 3 times as long for the SSautochrome setup. IE if turbo lag is 1/2 second for stock setup it will be 1 1/2 seconds for the SSautochrome setup.

I am just guessing at the volume for the stock setup but I don't think it is more but I have a spare WTA intercooler so I will measure its volume tomorrow and give you a more accurate comparison.

I would guess that you would get better performance from the stock WTA intercooler than you will from the SSautochrome setup. I think you would need a much bigger turbo to make this intercooler work well

 

It's very easy to fall into the the bigger is better trap. despite the size of that cooler you may run into many problems associated with improperly sized coolers.

-pressure drop(basically having the turbo pump out 15lbs, but only having 12 by the time it gets into the motor) over works turbo and kills it.
-lag, the beauty of the WTA is that the cooler piping is so short, throttle response is immediate

The ct26 has problems flowing enough air at the top end as it is. using an intercooler of this size will dramatically increase lag and punctuate the loss of flow in the upper rpm.
There are many factors that can help determine what inter cooler is right for you, would you like to discuss more?

 

How much HP do you plan to make?
do you plan on changing turbo's?

 

do you dislike the wta that much? whatever happened to you getting that srt4 intercooler, was it too small? maybe you can find an upgraded srt4 intercooler for cheaper since you have to make the piping yourself b/c there are no 165 kits out there anyway... btw, im still rockin the stock 165 intercooler and pump, i only have an upgraded h/e...

i drove around for 3+ hours today w/ my buddy in his mr2t doing some pulls down 355 and 57... they were some decent pulls up to 110+ and me hitting 16psi (on wastegate) on the ct27 ... when we stopped my intercooler was warm at best and the h/e was ice cold... by all means the stock intercooler isnt the best thats for sure, but it isnt as bad as you think... with that said i do have an rc intercooler and pump waiting to go on... if you can get a properly sized ata core then go for it, otherwise i think you can survive on the stock wta system till then...

 

I bought this one on Ebay and my buddy and I mounted it and made the piping for it. This one is 3" think and only 8" high. The amount of volume that flows through it is good up to 350hp. Here is a couple of pictures:






Thanks,

Chris

 

1 liters = 0.0353146667 cubic feet

The stock WTA intercooler and 4" of pipe is 2.5 liters in volume.
2.5 * 0.0353146667 cubic feet = 0.08828666674999999 cubic feet


With the SSautochrome unit useing 1.5 cubic feet it has more than 17 times the volume of air it needs to pressurize.

1.5 / 0.088 = 17.05

 

you can paint the heat exchanger silver if you want the ricer look?!?

 

if you can make a statement like that you shouldn't have to ask what we think about intercoolers.

anyway, if it was an exhaust system i would go with ssautocrap, but your intercooling is to much of an....science/art, so i wouldnt trust them.
my 2c

 

i would prob say that with everything stock except added boost pressure, exhaust, intake... that the srt4 intercooler would be a pretty good size... my buddy dynoed 244hp with just intake and exhaust and it felt like a rocket on the street... if you cant find one i can prob find one for you because a few of my friends are/were head of CSC (ChicagolandSrt4Club) but they all sold out and moved on to rwd (viper, gto, mustang)... also once you mount it up and do the piping that if you were going to upgrade to a bigger core later on that it would be no problem because you would only have to change a small amount of the piping...

 

i dont know it you saw this on the alltrac board...

http://alltrac.net/phpBB2/posting.php?m ... e&p=243508