Charge Cooler
Turbo Mini Forums

Im toying with the idea of using a charge cooler rather than an intercooler. From the research i'v done there are arguments saying charge coolers are only good for track & sprints where as others disagree and say they're good for road use too. Its neither here nor there really, but I'd like to know if anybody else has done it before? - from what i'v seen nearly everyone has an intercooler.

And if anybody does have any experience. do you have any advice to give, whats a good one to use, weight of ancillaries needed like ancillary rad, pump, reservoir etc etc.

You get the general idea.

Obviously if its totally pointless, and weighs thrice as much I'll drop it, but I thought i'd try something a bit different and break the mould a bit.

Cheers

IMO Dont, break the mould, charge coolers are superior for the 1/4 mile but not practical for road application, and i guess that you want to runn your car on the road and the track, stick to a good intercooler, sprayed mat black to give its heat up more and your well sorted
hope this helps, othere peeps ideas opinions may verie ?

Edited by BENROSS on 7th May, 2011.

I have a chargecooler on my focus Rs as from standard and does the job but there is just more on them too go wrong as the pump has just gone on mine.

Andy

What got my attention was this on ebay.
A cossie intercooler - which i'v seen shoe-horned into other turbo set-ups into a charge cooler. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Escort-Cosworth-Inte...a0#ht_500wt_922

A bit of money, but do you not get the best of both worlds was with one running into the other?

That item in question was a homologation exercise by Ford so they could use a charge cooler on the works Escort Cosworth rally cars. It isn't big enough to do anything useful on a road car, but was good enough to get it homologated.

As for charge coolers, I have one I'm planning to use.

Edited by Tom Fenton on 7th May, 2011.

Charge coolers are fine for the road. If you are tight for space up front they are perfect and can be just as efficient as intercoolers. The downside is the added complexity and the extra weight.

There is little point IMO of doing it for the sake of it, but if you have it and want more space in the front then fine.

http://www.twin-turbo.co.uk
http://www.hillclimbandsprint.co.uk/default.asp

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

what hp we looking at ? by cooling the air temp

1293 Turbo mini

i still have one for sale if you interested??

http://www.turbominis.co.uk/forums/index.php?p=vt&tid=409672

luke

I run a Pace cooler purely because it is very difficult for me to package an air/air intercooler. However it does seem to work well. On a hot day under fast road use (around 1 bar boost ) I'm seeing intake charge temps around 15-20 deg above ambient which is not too bad.
However what this would be like on a track I'm not sure.

One possible advantage is the lower intake volume as can be seen below on mine:

Edited by matnrach on 8th May, 2011.

water or air cooling isnt as important as efficient cooling.

Water is always better IMO, but obviously it makes for a more complicated and heavy install.

For those saying water is no use, that's just plain wrong. If you build and implement a flawed or inadequate setup that doesnt work. That isnt because of the water, it's plain bad design.

It would be like saying a woefully small intercooler is crap because it is an A2A intercooler. No it's crap because it hasnt been specced to suit the needs of that engine.

Likewise with A2W systems.

Spec it right, and IMO water is better.

But A2A is much easier and cheaper and nothing can really go wrong with it.

9.85 @ 145mph
202mph standing mile
speed didn't kill me, but taxation probably will

1293 Turbo mini

What are the rules to spec'ing an intercooler and charge cooler then?

There was a high spec MED turbo engine at Himley today running an intercooler probably only about 300x200x50mm volume.

Is there a rule of thumb for core size relative to engine power or not?

Whilst we're on the subject, can you adversely affect the engines performance through over-cooling?

I'v just also had a (likely useless) brainwave. Given a charge cooler needs an additional radiator for cooling the water - and im upgrading the radiator anyway, would it in theory be possible to use the same radiator to cool both the engine and charge cooler, through using separate cores or splitting the radiator somehow so it cools both water supplies?

Edited by carts60 on 8th May, 2011.

Hmm, wouldn't this just heat up the water to 90c? if you use a seperate radiator, you could keep it at almost ambient temperatures :)

Edit: didn't see that you meant to separate the circuits :) or you could use 2 small radiators at front?

Edited by Utking on 8th May, 2011.

Well obviously there would be some heat sink, but I wasn't suggesting the charge cooler would share the same water supply. Obviously it would have its own - achieved through splitting the rad.

It was just a thought, which could save a lot of space if it could be engineered correctly

Edited by carts60 on 8th May, 2011.

hmm, how would you split the radiator? I don't think you could overcool it, as there are cars that use charge coolers with dry ice. Unless that's to cool for you :cool:

Ha. Too cool for school.... never!

Im sure you could get on to a rad/intercooler specialist who could knock up a larger radiator with two separate intakes and outlets and who could also keep the two water supplies separate. Just a case of how much

The best way to keep the two water systems separate, is to do just that. If the two radiators are together within one unit, all you would do is soak heat from the hotter one to the cooler one and make yourself a nice charge heater.

haha. I'll stick to the basics then lol