before you fire up the flamethrowers, i'm just brainstorming here...

would adding an intercooler to a N/A setup be of any benefit or would it just be more of a restriction in the airflow?

 

in truth it shouldn't have ANY effect (positive or negative) if "sized right".....

- an engine (N/A, FI, whatever...) can only take in "X" amount of air at any specific RPM
- if your pipe can flow the required air, the pipe can be 2" long or 200" long and it makes no difference

intercoolers work on a temperature differential and thus the less differential, the less change they will make, thus an intercooler won't do any good on an N/A engine because:
- you are not inducing heat into the air charge by compression of the air
- the differential between the air charge temp and the air passing over the intercooler will be negligible

what it WILL do is add weight, complexity, and waste money that could be spent on something that actually DOES SOMETHING

 

Try nitrous oxide if you want to cool your intake charge

 

there are also those co2 kits....dei makes one. never really looked into them though. basically puts a frozen bulb in your intake tube.

 

colder air is denser. meaning you can get more into the the engine being colder more tightly packed particles or oxygen . than say if it is hotter thinner air so it does change but the difference is going to be very little with non compressed air.

why do you think altitude plays such a big role.

now nitrous is different , as well as oxygenated fuel.

c02 wont do anything but hurt the engine since it cant help fuel combust. now if you had something for the c02 to freeze or cool in the intake it may help but again very miniscule gain .

all in all , your better off adding a nitrous kit like mentioned.

 

X2 get some nitrous!

 

very good, you have the basic idea of how gas density works (j/k)

now lets look at the logic of expecting:
- an intercooler to lower atmospheric temperature air
- below atmospheric temperature
when
- the cooling media IS AT atmospheric temperature.....

if you can figure out how to pull that off, I know some people who would like to talk to you

the temperature drop is negligible compared to the loss of density...




please explaining how CO2 will "hurt the engine"...

add enough energy and the O2 and C atoms will split off thus the O2 would facilitate combustion and the C would burn.... (I do not know the exact temperature of this process and thereby if the event would occur inside the cylinder....I personally have never heard of using CO2 for this purpose)

N2O is not combustible until this split occurs.....

the advantage from CO2 and N2O in relation to temperature relates to compressed gas being released to atmospheric temperature. ANY gas will perform this action and will cool the surround air....

 

An intercooler on an N/A engine exchanging in ambient air will ALWAYS have a negative effect. I've never seen pipe or an intercooler with 0 pressure drop. Sized right or not.

 

thanks for bringing some interesting discussion to the table. i didn't really figure it would have any positive effect - otherwise somebody with the parts & time would've done it already. i was just curious...

 

there's always water/meth injection