charge cooler Vs intercooler
Turbo Mini Forums

Has anyone swapped between one of these and an intercooler? What was the result? Any notcieable difference? interested in one due to the space implications of a round nose as I'm not keen on cutting the shell. And can that water wetter be used? Would it help?

There is no performance to be gained and lost. If you size it right it will work. If you can fit an A2A cooler it is a much simpler install, but if you really want space under the bonet you could go for A2W, but lose boot space. Have a search, there are lots of examples of A2A coolers fitted below a round nose. In fact I can't think of anyone using an A2W, there must be, but they are not common.

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My dad's m3 uses a charge cooler, but also a small front mount radiator to cool the water, ess say it's the best set up they have tried on theirinstall., 7psi supercharged. The veyron also uses chargecoolers

Edited by bennyy on 29th Nov, 2012.

Audi s4 b5 - 470bhp & 486ft lbs

On 30th Apr, 2012 Brett said:
yeah stick the bit in and give it a wobble

yes thats what i was thinking if i was to fit a charge cooler i could have a big rad at the front for it, id have thought when moving the water would end up super cool

the veyron is also mid engined, and like stated previously it is better for a mid engine build as you dont have boost pipes running the length of the car loosing pressure?

All you need is ducts and an intercooler would work, the Porsche 996 & 997 turbo's for example, work very well.

People seem to think intercoolers are more efficient because they are more popular, a charge cooler, can be as, if not more efficient than an intercooler, water is 4x better than air at dissipating heat, you put a red hot frying pan into water, within a few seconds it has cooled down, you try to cool it down that quickly in air?

Edited by bennyy on 29th Nov, 2012.

Audi s4 b5 - 470bhp & 486ft lbs

On 30th Apr, 2012 Brett said:
yeah stick the bit in and give it a wobble

If you can fit a big rad in for a charge cooler then just fit an A2A cooler. there is no reason to add an A2W cooler unless you really need to for packaging, i.e rear/mid engined.

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Water may be better at dissipating heat but the problem is that you then need to remove that heat from the water, and that is done by air, so the advantage is immediately lost.

Certainly going charge cooler if I can get a GTM Coupe to fit around my engine :)

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or just run it in the boot like me?

No it is not lost, because if both the air and water are at 10deg for example, the water will still cool better.

Audi s4 b5 - 470bhp & 486ft lbs

On 30th Apr, 2012 Brett said:
yeah stick the bit in and give it a wobble

The chargecooler will absorb heat much better than an intercooler can dissipate it. However, you have to dissipate that heat from the chargecooler water. If you are using a water to air cooler, you have reintroduced the problem of the intercooler - trying to transfer heat to air passing over a heat exchanger. There is no getting away from this.

But in some cases you could use short hoses through a relatively small charge cooler to reduce pressure losses, then position a whopping great radiator where ever is convenient to help dissipated heat from the fluid.
But for front engined cars, unless they are drag cars, you could position a fair sized intercooler in a good location without having to have massively long hoses.
Obviously rear engined cars would benefit from this more.

But also for a road car where full boost is not used all the time the charge cooler would be beneficial as it would immediately take a lot of the heat away from the charge, then dissipated the heat from the fluid over a period of time, whereas an intercooler would not be able to cool as much in the small space of time where you are on boost.

A good intercooler, for example, might cool the air to 3deg. Above ambient temperature, now cool the water down to 3 or even 4 or 5deg. Above ambient temperature, it will cool lots better, again, try dunking a frying pan into 20deg water, will still cool better than blasting it with air

Audi s4 b5 - 470bhp & 486ft lbs

On 30th Apr, 2012 Brett said:
yeah stick the bit in and give it a wobble

When i did a short time at bolton uni, i remember watching a guy who had a turbo mini do a rolling road test on it. He had a small intercooler on two very long pipes extending out of the car onto the floor. On the second run he put the intercooler into a bucket of water that was at room temp. Apparently gained nearly 10bhp.
I think in a road car the problem would be keeping the water at a stable temperature plus all the added weight of water plus extra rad and piping. Is it really worth it?

Im confused to why people are mentioning charge coolers as a packaging alternative.
Surely with the CC system you need to find space for the gubbings for system, the pump, pipe and still going to need space for a radiator anyway.
while an Intercooler is generaly thicker and large diam pipe, i think its a bit of a 50/50 game (unless its a mid-engine)

David.

Because a charge cooler in the front is much smaller than an equivalent inter cooler. Over all the charge cooler takes more space, but you can move most of it out of he engine bay.

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http://www.hillclimbandsprint.co.uk/default.asp

A man without a project is like a like a woman without a shopping list.

Space issue in a mini is under the bonnet particularly the front, not all of the charge cooler set up needs to be under the bonnet,

Audi s4 b5 - 470bhp & 486ft lbs

On 30th Apr, 2012 Brett said:
yeah stick the bit in and give it a wobble

meh, i just typed out a really long reply but deleted it because i dont see the point in going into details
i think it comes down to preference and available space, both do the job well enough if suitably sized
all day long i will argue that the A2W is better but that said all my cars have intercoolers because there cheaper, simpler and cant breakdown - they do the job
but if i was building the ultimate drag car it would have to be A2W because the intercooler is vastly incapable of cooling enough bellow lets say 50mph( for argument sake) and the 'duckting' of my intercooler is well thought out and aerodynamically tested ( with gafa tape and wool )

now i think about it i wouldnt even bother with that, i have been having fantastic results injecting water and water/meth+ some other dodgy mix i came up with

Yes i moved to the darkside

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I'm still with the intercooler camp. You'd need a very big charge cooler set up to beat an intercooler, because you're just heating up the water in the wet side of the system, and have the same problem of how to ditch that heat quick enough- and you will never get a recirculating water system to get ice cold, so you may as well just use a well designed intercooler (fins internally as well as externally).

Surely the weight of all the coolant, extra radiator, pump, plumbing to rear of car etc makes charge cooling far from ideal?!

On a different note- I read a theory ages ago about using a charge cooler packed with wax, apparently it is a very good conductor and has benefits for short bursts of power, and packed into a compact cooler. Probably not ideal or it wuld be common place on production cars but an interesting theory.

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well i know this is an old thread and all but i think id like to add to it perhaps this is of some use to someone?

as some people know ill be using a charge cooler for no real reason other than to be different, possibly to get close to ambient air charge temps at all times and cos i can..
id like to say at this stage ive used parts that are more or less rated for like 400hp and are probably more weight than cooling gains i should weigh this whole ordeal its bloody heavy!! not for a car on the TM diet that for sure..

so what parts have i used?

a nice thin heat exchanger at 1" thick 12" tall and 24" wide this is a tight fit in a club man front and ive "squared up" the body to give a nice fit witch cant be seen with the grill in place!
i have since blown some holes in the sheet metal between rad and bumper behind the grill so as not to be seen but give more air on the lower section of rad




the cooler has a proper air to water core not some cheep ass air to air job that restricts flow!
the core is 11"x9"x3.5" plenty for my use this thing has literally next to zero pressure drop
you can see that the water passages are much smaller than the air ones this is to keep losses at a minimum
also can see the fin pack in the coolant side is staggered and well bonded to help out with heat exchange




the pump is a bosh unit mounted below the IC at the low point it pushes almost 20 LPM so i was told it probably drops a fair amount with the rad and ic in the line... point is there should be a good flow rate..

so how crap/good is it?
well ive not built the engine so cant tell you for sure in real world conditions but i can tell you that i set it all up in the car just the way it will be then powered up the pump bleed the system poked a thermometer down the outlet and my workshop heat gun set on max down the in take from the turbo
i watched and waited for the hot air to come out but it just didn't even after a solid half hour it only climbed a few degrees from when i started
i should mention at this point the hot side of the ic was to hot to touch but the water works well at pulling the heat out the core and cold side where just that cold.
i did have the rad fan running just like it will be in use
now im not trying to show off or be one sided about this i just wanted to tell what ive experienced and i will update my comments once ive got the car running!

real world testing might show that the rads simply transfer to much heat between them and it works more like a charge heater!
i have sealed both rad cores together with about an inch air gap ive done this to force the air to flow throw both and hopefully maintain a cold air gap vs recalculate hot air and transfer into the IC.. i may have to run the thermo fan all the time to keep this random idea in motion...

There's a guy in the Bmw Mini scene using a GP intercooler and then it has a ring above it linked to a co2 tank and he uses that too drop the intercooler temps

food for thought

There's a guy in the Bmw Mini scene using a GP intercooler and then it has a ring above it linked to a co2 tank and he uses that too drop the intercooler temps

food for thought

ive herd of people doing things like that anyone know if they are able to last a good length of time say for a circuit racing event?
id see that sort of thing good for drag use as its probably quite light and gets things nice n chilly

brett has a good point dont bother with anything just shoot some kind of water ach mix in to pull heat out of the charge

hmm, watercooled turbo's will help bring down the charge temps along with either

also a good oil cooler will help too

intercoolers are cheaper and you can always get co2/ water mist spray set-ups from a water tank that doesnt heat up?

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