Jester_Si

I have an Air to Water setup for a honda. I did about 4 months of testing in FL during the summer. I had a little help from LHT performance.

I run a vortech aftercooler
water puppy 8 gpm pump
A setrab 16x10x2 excanger
No resevoir.

I found an ambient 97 to 104 degree intake temps, on a turbo hatch. I had this on a daily driver. I was going to use it in the CRX i am putting together but the aftercooler won't fit..dammitt

I tried a 3 gallon and a 1 gallon resevoir, downside was...once that resevoir started to circulte the water, you end up with a pool of hot water that you are trying to cool. Removed the resevoir and my temps were more ambient and wouldn't rise to 180 degress after driving around for a couple hours.

If you have any questions, i will help best that i can.

PS..my setup is forsale, if interested PM me.

NEO_WRX

if you ever get around to it, and you'd be interested in making another one let me know. I'll get you the money for parts and some extra for the work.

and mike, i think you should just keep yoru IC setup the way it is

Fabrik8

If I make one, I'm going to do a solid model and everything so I can get everything cut with a laser or waterjet and then TIG'd. I figure if I go through the effort, I should probably make a small production run if they work well. Pace Products in the UK makes a cool hybrid air to air / air to water for WRXs, it's pretty cool too. I'm going to put my own spin on that concept, but keep it air to water. I don't like the heatsoak of the air to air topmount, I just think it's a bad idea.

MP5

Pms have been sent, still looking for more info. Also to everyone who has given info thank you very much.

dave22

That's certainly interesting.

litlespic

I have to agree with this, as akward as it sounds, I ran mine with maybe a 1/4 gallon resovior, just enough for the pump to pick up and flow and saw luke warm water at most, never had a thermo read out on any temps but the finger test always said "good to go".

But like it has been said, with no resivoir there is no place to add ice/additives to use the full capability's of the water circulation.

But who is going to use ice, come on

UNCLEBENZ

$100

Jester_Si

The resevoir creates a place for heat to pool. If you think about it, with a 1 gallon resevoir, you will always have a gallon stagnet. The more heat the water absorbs, the more heat the resevoir will retain. Now you will have to cool the gallon of water, as well as the intake air.

Why do you think the cooling system of a car doesn't have a HUGE resevoir? You want to use the heat exchanger as the resevoir, this away you water will always be cooling and not sitting getting hot.

A resevoir is really only good at the track. Where you can fill it with ice, usually after one pass, two on a cool day, the ice melts and the water is hot. ( i tried no exchanger and just a resevoir, IMO, good for track use only)

Did that make sense? I suck at explaining things like that.

I can't take full credit. John at LHT in tampa helped me with my research.

Fabrik8

If you're not going with a resevoir, at least usea little header tank. Then you'll have an easy place to fill the system, get rid of air, and do whatever else you need. The size of the header tank won't really matter unless your pump is teeny.
I agree, the resevoir is not really needed at all for street use, you should be relying on the thermal mass of the radiator. Having a resevoir is nice from a heat soak standpoint though, if you can keep the mass of water in the resevoir at a good temp you'll have more time at a stoplight before system heat soak becomes a problem. The more water you have, the longer it takes to change temp, which is good when you're not moving (and have no ambient airflow) but less efficient when you're moving (takes londer to get down to efficient temps). The tank won't hold heat, it will just make the entire system slower to change temp. You aren't collecting water after all, you still have water going to the radiator and getting cooled. The engine bay heatsoak issue is one of the big reasons that many people put the resevoirs in their trunks, not their engine bay. Plus, do you really need any more weight in the front of the car??

I'd just recommend a little header tank with a fill cap though, it will work great with none of the extra weight or problems of a bigger resevoir. A swirl tank would work also, for the same reasons as a header tank. If you're really pimp, get a aluminum header tank and get it ceramic coated to block engine bay heat.

Optimus Prime

Question, before looking into A2A or A2W, did you look at Tube and Fin vs Bar and Finn designs? Which to you have now? If you could minimzie your pressure drop across the board, you might not need a bigger unit, just a different unit. Bigger isn't better, it's all about pressure drop. Different designs can offer what you need.