I've had a turbo SVO Ford in the past, and saw the effects of an intercooler first hand. Does anyone think it would be worth while to pick up a used intercooler from a turbo or supercharged car and fit it to a normally apsirated engine.
The temperature drop would help, but I'm not sure how consistent it would be. Especially in a climate like Wisconsin where during certain times of the year it can be 80 degrees one day and 35 the next. I am working on a home made ram air type set-up from the fog lamp location and was wondering if the intercooler would be worth the trouble. I also know that the turbo and supercharged engines utilizing intercoolers do it for heat disapation generated by those systems. Please comment. Thanks guys.

 

Naturally aspirated engines won't get help from an intercooler. The air is not heated. Cooler air from outside is always better, but an intercooler would probaly be a restriction and loss of power. Beside you would be cooling the intake air with air thats the same temp

 

Run a cold air intake, it would benefit you more.

 

99GMCCan you are partially correct but any motor can at least thoreticly benifit from a cooler intake charge it's not practical to see enough temp reduction on a naturally asperated engine to show any big gains.Superchargers can increase air temp to well over 180 degrees an intercooler can show big gains even with an air to air heat exchanger.

 

Even with boost, an intercooler will drop boost pressure some because it is so restrictive. Imagine an N/A engine trying to suck a good healthy charge through an intercooler. Talk about a restriction. Even if it dropped air temps by 10 degrees, it wouldn't offset the restriction. Just MHO.

 

exactly what BigTex said

 

Good info. Thanks for the responses. The ram-air intake I will be making will be a cold air type, so I guess I was wondering maybe the air being supplied into this intake system could be super cooled some how. I have seen systems for drag racing apps that use an ice surrounded air box of some kind, how about running some kind of conditioned air? I was a machinist for quite a while and have seen some pretty neat things done with cold air guns to keep cutting tools cool while machining metal. Basically they were heat sinks that compressed air was blown through in much the same way a inter cooler works. That is what really gave me the idea in the first place. The air charge was so cold coming from the gun it would drop the temp of the metal being cut to around 40 degrees or so. Any type of automotive system out there besides the iced air boxes? I understand that an inter cooler will probably be wayy too restrictive, so that is out. Maybe this whole topic is a waste of time? Thanks again.

 

Off the subject, to blown Chevy...are the drilled rotors you have on your truck the stock items modified or aftermarket? Did you see and increase in breaking performance after this mod was done? If you did modify them could you tell me the pattern and spacing so I can safely modify my own?
Thanks man.

 

Have any of you guys seen this?
http://www.designengineering.com/cry...ir_intake.html
What do you think?

 

That Cryo thing is new to me, but I say if you want a cold intkae charge and would still have to carry around a bottle, then just get N2O - it will really cool down the air