Jester_Si

I used my own version of this, I toy'ed with the idea of using my Ceramic coated AST tank from my RX7, never got around to it though.

We had my resevior in the hatch (eg hatch) and with the extra hoses and the resevoir, i went from 1.5 gallons of water to 5 gallons....now do you really think its easier to cool 5 gallons, when a resevoir does nothing but hold water and heat? I use an 8gpm pump and with the resevoir, once the temps would began to heat up...they just kept going up and the would level off at like 160-180.
Now that my exchanger hold 90% of the water, it is always cooling.

I hope i explained that the way i wanted?

Fabrik8

Pressure drop doesn't matter if you don't have enough frontal area to get the job done, which gets into the core efficiency debate. What I'm saying is that a low pressure drop intercooler is worthless if you don't have enough thermal mass to do what you need.

Optimus Prime

You miss my point. Thats why I also asked what he has currently, tube and fin or bar and fin, also thickness would be pertinent information.

MP5

I have a 18.25" x 6" x 2.87" PWR intercooler. It is a tube and fin intercooler. It also is rated at 420 CFM. I am thinking about switching to air to water because no matter what, air to water is more efficent than air to air. I notice a huge difference in my car's performance between a warm day and a cold night. I know turbo cars have a difference, but from riding with friends in their cars and riding in mine, i loose too much power on warm days. Plus with me upgrading my setup, i plan on flowing more air and dont think the intercooler i have will keep up.

Fobby

air to water like we talked about

Fabrik8

You're fooling yourself if you think an air/water isn't going to have the same difference in performance between cool nights and hot days. The bigger the difference between charge air temp and ambient temp, the better the intercooler will work, it doesn't matter what type you have. If you don't notice a difference between cold outside and hot outside, something is wrong with your setup.
You're not going to go below ambient air temp with either one, so they'll perform the same if they are both adequately sized. Basically, if they're both big enough, one won't really perform any better than the other. It's just physics.
Don't fall into that trap, air/water isn't more efficient no matter what, that's BS. You can still end up with a core that's too small or a radiator that's too small, or a pump that doesn't flow enough, or an inefficient core, etc., if you don't pay attention to detail. I'm not saying that theres anything wrong with air to water setups, just that making sweeping generalizations about either is dangerous. It's actually difficult to make a air/water match the efficiency of a well designed air/air.
So don't just slap an air/water setup on there and think it will outperform what you have now, because it may not, make sure you design your setup carefully.

I don't blame you for wanting to get rid of that 19x6" core you have now, I'm not a big fan of cores that are that long with that little cross sectional area. I always wince when I see those 30x6" cores with square end tanks on Hondas, they're like a big air restrictor..

litlespic

^ plus 1. That was put very well.

As big of a fan of a/w as I am, that made me almost hate them and understand.

judge

in cab A2W is where its at. if you are gonna do it right keep everything possible away from that engine bay. i did tons of research on this and most on this site have seen that setup i had in my mr2.my setup never saw more that 10 degrees above ambient air temps even in the summer sitting in traffic. the only reason some see heatsoak so bad is because of how their setup is done. i also paid close to 2k in just the piping, core, heat exchanger, pump, lines, fittings, and other little things.

Fabrik8

There really isn't much reason to do an incab setup though, if you have enough flow and the setup is shielded from direct heat properly, why waste the cabin space? I'm not saying it's not good, just that it's not necessary. No matter what, you'll have some temp rise in traffic because there isn't much (or any) ambient flow through the rad core. Like I said, ceramic coating can do so much to defect ambient heat away from piping, core, etc. About the incab stuff: there comes a point that doing something more radical just doesn't really net any benefit if the original setup is done properly in the first place. With a proper setup, there should be very little theoretical performance gain between in and out of the engine bay. You can't prevent having charge air piping in the engine bay, no matter where the intercooler core actually is, so ceramic coat it and call it a day. We're seeing almost 40% less radiated heat from our exhaust header (race car) after getting it ceramic coated, and roughly the same should apply for keeping heat out of charge piping. The amount of cooling power in the core vs. the amount of radiant heat it absorbs from the engine bay is small compared to the heat that the core has to dissipate from the charge air, so that's not too much of an issue either.
I think in cab stuff is cool (and convenient) for race setups, but I'm not willing to sacrifice interior room for such a small performance gain that can be gained from doing some other thing instead.

judge

if you do it right you wont sacrifice much room inside. i am not saying that you will have all of your leg room but you sure as hell dont have to take out the seat by no means. i have done two and both worked out perfect for daily driving.