UrQ Intercooler Solutions

[E. Roy Wendell IV]

On Jan 31, 2007, at 10:19 PM, thejimrose wrote:

> ok kids here's mr mismatched snow tires and wacky suspension questions
> at it again..
>
> so i've been looking into IC solutions for my a4 since it's a crap IC
> in a not-so-great location [ahead of the drivers side wheelwell]. so
> in the interest of improiving what i have, i've been wondering if
> putting a small electric fan behind the ic to pull air thru it
> wouldn't make it more efficient?
>
> it works for radiators, right? has anyone ever heard/seen/tried this?
> any flow engineers out there have input? always seemed to me like it
> might be a really big improvement, of course with nothing but
> supposition and inductive reasoning. =)
>
> one one hand, i assume if it worked people would do it. so what i
> wonder is, why woudln't it work?
>
> cheers
> jim
>
>> Yeah - I may have to set her up with the stock IC and have  
>> something fabbed
>> up. Even the stock unit is rather crammed.  It seems like having  
>> two in series
>> may need to be done or put two cores at an angle, or ????
>>

The only stock forced air intercooler that I know of I know of is the  
Renault Fuego but I'm not sure that's a recommendation. I think the  
fan would have to be rather larger than you are thinking in order to  
do much good and proper ducting is paramount. Just strapping a fan to  
the back of the intercooler isn't likely to do much. You have to have  
a lot of mass flow in order to transfer much heat when it's t-shirt  
weather. Contrary to popular believe, intercoolers act much more like  
a heat sink than a heat exchanger. They absorb temperature spikes  
during boost and then shed much of the heat back into the intake air  
when off boost.

Could be worse, you could have your intercooler sitting directly on  
top of a hot engine a la Subaru.

As far as I'm concerned air-to-water is the solution for street and  
drag intercoolers.


Roy Wendell
erwendell at mac.com
Too many type 44 tq
A pair of MR2s