Re: Home made intercooler

[JShadzi@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/6/99 8:29:01 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
livols1@investorsgroup.com writes:

<< I was also thinking about the intercooler on my car and how to improve
 upon it, especially now that temps have turned cooler and you can feel
 the additional power from the colder air.  One thing I was thinking
 about was integrating the IC with the air conditioning.  Again, you
 wouldn't need it in the winter but in the summer, when you have the a/c
 on anyway, what if the cold air was routed through the intercooler
 (somehow) before going through the vents in the passenger compartment?
 Maybe the cooled air would pick up too much heat from the IC, but maybe
 not.  Also, the additional burden on the engine may overcome any hp
 gains from having colder intake air but I have read that even a small
 drop in intake air temp will result in significant power increase.  If
 you are going to go to the trouble of manufacturing your own IC, you may
 want to consider this.
 I keep running through it and it seems that it should work.  This is the
 way I see it:
 
 1. You can get more power by burning more gas.
 
 OR
 
 2. You can burn more gas but use the additional power to run the a/c,
 which cools the intake air, resulting in a denser charge in the
 combustion chamber resulting in more power out of the engine.
 
 The big question of course is will the colder air give more power than
 just burning the gas?  I don't know!  Any ideas? 
 
 Oh, BTW Yes, I am from earth, but sometimes I think out loud....
  >>

    I would really be surprised is someone had not thought of this before and 
determined it not effective, especially when you are using torque from the 
motor to try to sqeeze out an equal amount of torque.  I agree that water 
injected cooling is the best way to increase you IC's cooling effeciency.
Javad