Re: S.P.E.A.R.C.O.intercooler guys??

[ptimmerm@mashtun.JPL.NASA.GOV]

I have the before and after intercooler thermocouple thing.
I have NOT done the before and after pressure measurement.
The drop will react fairly monotonically I should think,
but my puny UrQ IC will have some drop.

Anyhow, I have reported some temperature data in the past.
In general, the effic. of the IC varies dramatically with
the road speed.  The efficiency also degrades with repeated
WOT runs, especially if no freeway speeds are seen in between.
Can you say pro rally!  Anyhow, running at about 17 psig at
around 1000 ft alitude on a cool sumer evening in socal (~20C)
You can see temperatures out of the turbo reach over 160C.
Out of the IC you will see peaks of about 80-100C.
This works out to about 50% efficiency, and is a worst case.
I know you could do worse up hill, in the dirt, in the moutains,
or after parking with a heat soak problem.  But for a moving car
on the street, these dont really count.  A milder application
of throttle with less frequent stomping may show you 70% effic.

Now if you take the same setup and mist water over it with a sprayer,
you will see 70-80 % efficiency all the time, which means that the
air temp hardly ever goes above 50C - 60C out of the intercooler.
This is not a big improvement over the first run with a cool intake
tract, but the fall off in performance is very noticable without it.  
Remember that temp sensor mounted on the top of the intake manifold?  
It goes to the brain which adds ignition retard (is that clear?) when 
the temp goes up.  Ti's not just a density thing, it's advance too.

OK, I writ enough already. Ross is right, big is beautyful in IC's.
Still looking for a place to stuff one in that densely populated grill.

paul timmerman