Re: intercooler

[Dave Lawson <dlawson@ball.com>]

Hi Dan and Phillip,

>>         Hi, I am from Toronto and own a 1985 ur-quattro. I have done some
>> work to it and it is very very quick. But speed is like a disease and you
>> always want more. One thing I have not done is change the intercooler. So 
I
>> am looking for information about putting in a larger intercooler, how 
much
>> of a difference it makes, where to find one, the cost and finally how 
much
>> modification is needed to make it fit in the car.

>Hmmmm, I guess great minds think alike.  I'm doing some major upgrades
>to my '83 Ur, and among them, I was thinking about the intercooler.
>Way back when, you used to be able to get a bigger intercooler from
>ABT.  What you would do is throw away your smaller radiator, and put
>the new intercooler there.  Since the cooling is marginal at best on
>these cars, I was reluctant to throw away about a third of the cooling
>capacity, so I thought of another possibility.

>I think what I'm gonna end up doing is first buying a bigger oil cooler
>and relocating it in front of the big water radiator.  This will free up
>a lot of room (relatively speaking, of course) around where the oil cooler
>used to be.  My idea is to then mount a bigger intercooler down there
>horizontally, and duct air through the bottom of it up into the engine
>:compartment.  If you want to know where to get aftermarket intercoolers,
>try Spearco, Cartech, or HKS.  I'm kinda partial to Spearco myself, so I
>think I'll end up using one of theirs.  Let me know what you decide on,
>and how about some more info on what you've done to your car so far.

The idea of mounting a larger intercooler horizontally is how Treser fit a 
larger intercooler to the TQC. I'm not sure where he mounted the oil cooler, 
but he fit a larger intercooler 'down there'. I will try to find out what 
size intercooler he used, I think it was metioned in some article I have. I 
learned of another possible method from a guy in the UK. He was talking of 
removing the A/C compressor and moving the alternator to the radiator side 
of the engine, which would free up space on the intake side of the engine. 
You could then mount a much larger unit close to the stock location.

As Dan mentioned, there is the Abt system which mounted the intercooler 
where the secondary radiator is mounted. If you went with this 
configuration, you could re-gain lost cooling capacity by upgrading to the 
larger primary radiator which SportWheels has developed. If your really 
going for it, check into the liquid-to-air intercooling systems.

As a starting point, buy the Spearco catalog, it has lots of good 
information including efficiency curves.

And please share with us what performance upgrades you have done on your 85 
Ur-q.
 -
Dave Lawson  dlawson@ball.com
86 coupe GT
83 TQC