articfriends

Blue 242- you will probably never get any real info out of procharger. As far as Tom Robinson/R-tec,a few years ago he was first marketing his intercooler set-ups,nice looking stuff,well engineered. I kept reading about this 2 1/2 to 3 psi pressure drop acrossed the intercooler on a typical procharger and a claim of 80plus hp gain switching to his intercooler. This convinced me to do my own on the water testing of my own set-up,I was only seeing about a 3/4 lb drop acrossed my intercooler (aw504). After posting a thread and a couple phone conversations with Tom the facts came out that all comparisons were done between prochargers smallest 324 intercooler and his product. I definately believe the ideal intercooler would have as close to zero pressure drop as possible,remove as much heat as physically possible,still fit in a crampt engine compt and not cost 5000$,if you find it let me know. We do have the benefit in Mi of 60 to low 70 degree cooling medium,detonation hasn't been a problem,I haven't done intake air temp readings under boost but I plan to.
Kennyo-did you see any gain re-doing your intercooler,when you going to send me your throttle body to bore it out to let your motor see more of that boost? Smitty

JasonSmith

Might bring it to Wichita for ya! I'll know more as the week unfolds.
Been eating sh!t sandwiches all week this week.

kennyo

Smitty,
I haven't been able to WOT yet. Having trouble getting the MEFI 4 dailed in. I may try to call you later to ask some specific ??s. I hope to be WOT soon. The intercooler guy was named Gerard. He said a 40% improvement on this design... who knows.

Blue242, The reason for the bends is everything is crammed in a 272 Baja. NO room. Trust me when I say if Smitty didn't figure it out it wasn't going to get figured! Inside those bends is super smooth it just takes a while to get there!!

Blue242

Tunertech,

If you get the info, please share, it will help all of us..! Thanks for offering..!

Smitty,

Thanks for the update on the R-Tech claims, I appreciate it. The 504 is still using the conventional bar and plate or a derivative. The 3/4 PSI pressure drop is pretty good, but I would be curious to know at what flow, and at what pressure?

As far as the cooler I am having done, it is very different. It is the Laminova stuff www.laminova.com They make in my opinion the best AWIC that I know of. Bad thing is, you have to make the tank yourself, and it requires very very critical machining.. I had a machinist screw up a whole bunch of stuff making prototypes. Anyway, when it is done, I will post pics. I have others made for another car application, bu it is smaller than what I want for the boat.

The other good thing, is that you can scale the size of the IC by the number of cores. Other bad thing, is it is not cheap, but it works very well. It will be probably be less than $5000... Actually, the 1000HP cooler I am building will be a LOT less than $5K.. It may be about 2000 with less than 1 PSI pressure drop across the core, and can cool to greater than 90% efficiency based on coolant flow, storage capacity, and setup.. Maybe I should build these things and sell them at $2500 a pop? How many will you buy? LOL..!

I have been dealing with Laminova for many years, and the pro racers in Pro Rally, IMSA, and others swear by their stuff. Anyway, so do many Auto Manufacturers, including Ford, GM, and others.. They will also send you charts, graphs, and test data for all their stuff. I think they have a bunch on their site as well.

If I had 60-70 degree ambient temps all year round, I would worry abit less about heat gain, but not by much. We have 60-120 degree ambient temps in my area in CA, and I want to build my setup to go anywhere I want, and not worry about if it will live.. It would be interesting to see your intake charge temp before and after the cooler to see how much the cooler is taking out. Also temps at different pressure and flow. (Then charge density could be calculated...Me an my physics again.... LOL...!)

If the cooler is running to open water (cooled by lake water directly) then the cold 50 degree water of the lake will increase the efficiency more than say 70 degree water as well. (Then you also have all that lake crud building inside the cooler too.)

Anyway, thanks for the input..

Kenyo,

I understand the space issue. I have similar considerations in my Formula, but it is no way near as cramped as the engine compartment of say a Corvette or one of my Porsches.. I have some ideas.... Then again, maybe you guys already tried it...

My comment is based on this: Distance after the cooler counts, as the heat is created from the pressure of compressing the air... If that distance is long, then you clold be adding heat back into the charge after you remove it with the cooler if the distance to the intake valve is too long. this of course is also dependent on the flow, and pressure of the system..

The Procharger compressor housing does swivel in 360 degrees, so you could theoretically have only 2 long multi plane bends with a straight shot at the intake manifold, instead of the multiple single plane bends on the system now.. It would require adjusting the compressor, and piping a bit differently, but not much...!



R

articfriends

Blue 242-When I tested my aw504 for pressure drop I turned the boost up to about 13-14 psi,I was seeing about 13 psi at the inlet and a hair over 12 on the outlet. I used a pair of calibrated 6" bourdon tube type pressure/vacuum gauges. The blower was turning 10-15% past its rating (m-3sc),procharger claims about 2200 cfm at the kind of rpms I was turning the blower but those numbers I think are "free flow" numbers,not real flow numbers. Either way I repeated the test runs several times and saw 3/4 to 1 psi differential acrossed the intercooler so the flow drop wasn't nearly as bad as what had been claimed. The heat transfer on the other hand,is probably less then desired,I'm anxious to see on a laptop this summer at the manifold iat,Smitty

Blue242

Hi Smitty,

Thanks for the data.. I take it you are spinning the M3SC at 50,000 RPM... Per ATI, the SC is only good for 1700CFM at that speed, and the M3 is good for 2200 CFM at 57,000 RPM.. My guess is they put a lower step up ratio due to the heat in the case from the sealed oiling..

Anyway, at 13 PSI pre and 12 PSI post intercooler, if the SC was maxed at 50K RPM's, then you are almost at +1 bar absolute with a pressure ratio of 1.8 - 1.9.. Off the cuff, I would guess the IAT would be between 125-150 Def F over ambient before the IC.. Just a guess of course, as I have no reference from ATI on the linear heat gain scaled to RPM of the compressor..

The 3/4 to 1 PSI drop is good across the core.. It makes sense off the cuff that you would get 1000-1100 HP out of this setup. The off the cuff ratio I use is 1.5CFM per HP as a guide. 1700CFM from an M3SC would put you in the 1000-1100 range, as the compressor would have to be over driven to get more out of it, and the bearings my toast themselves if you keep it a sealed unit. The number can be lower, but it depends on VE, and heat management...

Q's:
1. How long is the distance to the intake manifold from the IC, and how big is the piping (ID)?
2. Which intake are you running? HP or MPI, or EFI?
3. Single in that 272, or twins?
4. 540 CI right?
5. What bore/stroke, and what heads?
6. Cam Int/Ex at .500
7. Headers? 1.875, or 2.000 primaries? 4.000 tailpipes?

Just curious to see.....

Oh, when you get the IAT data, please post or send me a PM... I would be very curious on actual IAT pre and post the IC at WOT at whatever the ambient is when you measure it..

Thanks again,

Richard

Whipple Charged

Laminova? Wow, your asking for serious problems! First, its aluminum, so your instantly going to be dealing with corrision, second, once you get any corrision in those cores, they will become very ineffective, and possibly fail. They have tiny water passages, and once one corrodes and you lose that entire core, your dependent on the rest of the cores to maintain, which they can't because the air is still going by that uncooled aluminum heat sink, which actually stores heat when it's not cooled. Anodizing and chromacote will help very little. Next, the amount of them, are you going to be putting 8 into your manifold? Even the 2.0L ecotec engine needed 3 12" units to maintain 40deg F over ambient, and thats with a 60ci sc.

I've used them, work very well, really quiets the SC noise and cools pretty well for it's given area, but in marine, corrisive waters? I think you could have some issues so be careful. Even inland lakes cause severe corrision in aluminum based intercoolers. But in most of my applications, I could never get enough of the cores, near the ports, to get decent distribution and reduced pumping losses. It's easier when your ducting air from one location to another, but I could also do more with specific bar/plate designed cores.

To note, on our MOAC core, turbo application, 2500cfm, 30psi, core had .5 pressure drop.

Thanks

Turbojack

I had the procharger 504 intercooler with 2 90's & 1 45. I never did pressure tests but the air temp at the throttle body would get over the 140 degree mark on a long run. After changing to the Rtech I have never seen over 120 degrees. I am using a Fast EFI sytem and after installing the Rtech the EFI is putting in aprox. 15% more fuel to keep the A/F ratio at 11.5 at max RPM compared to when I was using the Procharger intercooler. With the procharger intercooler I was picking up the water after the fuel cooler and oil cooler. The Rtech I changed to just after the water pump. I am guessing this has made some of the temp change but I do not feel it made the complete temp change.

articfriends

1. The tube attaching the i.c. to the intake is 3 1/2 id by about 6-7" (rubber)
2.highly modified 502 mpi intake with bored out throttle body
3.single engine 2000 baja 272
4.540 cu in (4.25 stroke/4.500 bore-I don't believe in boring cylinders real thin and the associated problems that come with it)
5.afr 315 cnc heads with additional porting and work,some of it was to straigthen out a hacked up valve job I got talked into originally. Port matched perfectly to intake even though afr reccomends aginst it.
6.Marine kinetics/bob madera was a integral part in the camshaft selection/consulting on last build. I don't have cam card in front of me but it was 246/256 at .050 if I remember,cam was ground AFTER final flow testing of the cylinder heads and intake.
7. stainless marine hi tq 3's with 5" tails,some people argue on blower motors these out perform headers,its debatable.

I spent alot of time on the dyno,Tyler Crockett did the tuning. I was running a mefi3 ecm when I made 950 hp 3 years ago,I converted to a mefi4 this time,bought 2 ecm's and had a N/A tune done with the 2nd ecm. The motor made 657hp on its own,not bad for a 8-1 540 cammed for a supercharger. Made 1037 hp with my 4.0 inch upper pulley(pump gas),1057 hp with 3.85 upper pulley (pump gas) and 1115 hp with 3.70 upper pulley (80% 92 octane/20% 110 octane). Boat runs just shy of 100 mph with the 1057hp set-up,76 mph with blower un-hooked with the 657 hp set-up. For reference boat ran 60-64 mph w/stock 502 years ago,Smitty

Blue242

Hi Smitty,

Very interesting.. The Cam profile is similar duration to a Cam Motion cam I have in a 588 in the garage ground for an SC. but without knowing lobe sep it may be a bit different to your cam..

Very good information, thanks again.. Oh, how much do your heads flow..? CFM? at .050"? or max flow if you are not sure...


Turbojack,

The change in the cooling should make a difference, if it was just after the seawaterpump. If it is done after any coolers or circ pumps, then you will have extra heat inf the system.


Whipple,

Thanks for the input, I appreciate it. However, the design of the system in my application will not subject the cores at any time to corrosion, or any contaminants.. This is key, as I know the effects of corrosion on aluminum... In addition, there are cores larger than 12 inches/332 mm cores you used, and the design of the system is again key if flow is not taken into account as you have found out.

I would be curious to know how much coolant flow you were putting through the Laminova cores you used, and how much heat from the compressor being used, in addition to the pressure ratio and how much PSI on the discharge. (I think you know what I'm after here..) In addition, what size was the heat exchanger after the AWIC, and how much coolant capacity was in the Ecotec System....?

I can think of several things that would cause the cores to underperform. Again, the system design is key.. In my design, I have addressed these issues. (A 5.0L Mercedes makes over 500HP with a 1.7L Opcon compressor and a 4 core 332mm Intercooler at .7bar boost with a 1.4 Pressure ratio in the compressor with a similar design....) This is a conservative 100HP/Liter, or 1.6 HP per CI.... Another 5.5L Mercedes makes in excess of 600 HP, or 109HP/Liter. All very conservatively. More can be gotten out of the systems.

On your MOAC 2500 CFM cooler, how much heat rejection/ what's the efficiency of the cooler..? Pressure drop is very good at .5 psi. I'm just curious how much heat will be taken out at that level..

The design is key, and I am positive the Laminova units will work very well in a properly designed system.. The IC must be matched to the compressor, with some headroom, and the rest of the design must also address the environment and use..

Thanks Again,

Richard