SKS

Check out a 935 Porsche, air cooled engine, water cooled IC's

CharlieGSanD

so youre saying that the car manufacturers know best? thats pretty hypocritical of you, given all the mods that you've done to your car. i dont know of one manufacturer that uses catch cans


if your'e saying that no car manufacturers use them. look at drag racing, many of the top imports use them, look @ fords new prototype focus, it has one. IIRC the GMC Cyclone had one
do some reasearch, you'll see

xr4tic

added complexity = more stuff that could break

WYSIWYG

kinda contradicts the definition of 'engineering' doesnt it =)

SpenceSTL

The 4 Cylinder Lotus Esprits came out of the box with a water/air IC, and they had a downright sick power/displacement ratio. I remember reading an article in Turbo mag a few years back about a mildly modded one that put out in the 400ish horse range on a Dynojet. Water is a fantastic way to cool anything.

jlh28athome

I have been considering one for a while. Very good idea.

SlvrBullet Unloaded

Based off of the system on my car...when someone questions the effectiveness of water over air as a cooling medium we use this experiment! heat 2 pieces of aluminum with a torch till they glow red, dip one piece into ambient water for 10 seconds and the other blow with high pressure ambient air for 10 seconds now touch each piece of aluminum to your lips and see which one melts your lips off! The answer will quickly come to you believe me!

dangonay

Sure the water in the IC core will extract heat much better than air, but this heat is being removed from the water by what? A radiator. And this radiator is cooled by what? Air.

So an Air/Water IC system really functions the same as an Air/Air system, in that heat from the intake charge is being removed and transferred to the ambient air. The water is just a medium for transferrring the heat from the IC core itself to the front of the car where all the nice fresh cold air is.

Unless my engineering is wrong, over the long term under continuous use, an Air/Water SYSTEM cannot be as efficient as Air/Air since no type of heat exchanger is 100% efficient, and an Air/Water system has 2 of them in series (vs 1 in the Air/Air).

That said, I think Air/Water IC's are a great idea for street cars. They offer some very slick packaging alternatives that you cannot get with Air/Air. And they don't suffer from heat soak when sitting still like an Air/Air does. I just don't think Air/Water is good for a track car which sees a lot of continuous boost.

xr4tic

plus, shouldn't water be just as good in giving off heat as it is in absorbing it?

In an air IC, you have air on both sides of the IC, whereas in an air/water IC, you have water on one side of the IC, and water on the otherside in the radiator

BigDog

efficiency will be less than a system with only one because "no heat exchanger is 100% efficient." That statement assumes that efficiency is linear with the heat exchange gradient, and it's not by a long shot. In fact, a long series of air to air exchangers would be more efficient than one assuming that you had enough pressure in the system to get around the inevitable pressure drop. Each excahger would be very efficient at removing a small amount of heat. The downside is the long path of air. Case in point, high fin count double pass excahngers reduce cool much more than a single pass low finclunt system. However, there is generally more pressure drop because of bottle necking that defeats some of the efficiency gain.

Now, as to water to air, the heat transfer properties of water make it much better hands down. Yes, you have to remove the heat from the water, but as John said, that is easily done compared to directly transferring heat from internal to external air. Just as the water readily absorbs heat from charge air, it also readily releases heat into external air. Basic symmetry principle of heat transfer from thermodynamics. Given the same energy difference gradient heat will transfer just as easily one direction as the other.