Anyone tried Water to air intercooler ? :)

[Road2Perfection]

Hey, Just wondering if anyone have tried it yet ?

And yes, I'm going to check how it is, just because you can
as shown below, you can follow more on our fb page, and I'll post the numbers of effeciency, temperature in/out once we get it on the dyno!

[Tom N]

Air to water intercooler is more effecient when set up properly on a drag car. But will not work as well as a high quality air to air like a large Garrett core on a street car or road coarse car.

One major key in a air to liquid is large feed and return line. Return must be up top and you want a high flowing pump. You want Icey water filling the entire core and rushing through it.

[Road2Perfection]

Originally Posted by Tom N

Air to water intercooler is more effecient when set up properly on a drag car. But will not work as well as a high quality air to air like a large Garrett core on a street car or road coarse car.

sure enough i've seen them on drag cars
This is effective cause you can get the temperatures below ambient.
Formula one, Bugatti Veyron, several lotus cars ++ use water to air intercoolers.
Also most cars with superchargers does, naturally due to space constraints.

MR2 people also run them due to space constraints, only on turbo applications of course


heat soak should be less appearant for water to air IC if sizing is done right, the minor pressure drop and minor response drop with extra core size and tubing should increase performance ever so slightly, I don't assume my buttdyno can even notice it.
But doing it cause I can

Edit: the way I see it, extra weight and complexity is the downsides.

[Boostd2]

I admire you for taking that route. Not many people would do that on street cars where an A2A intercooler can be placed on the car where highest flow of air is present. (i.e. the front in an FR car) but i'm sure you already had a regular FMIC in place before the a2w swap.

Personally I would take advantage of the FR setup and run a a2a fmic. Just because it's less weight,less possible system failures ( an a2w system can have a pump failure, or leaking water for instance) and due to high efficiency of some cores available. You can also chec V-mount setup out if you really don't want a big i/c in front.

Building an A2W system has it perks of course, which makes you learn a bit more of fluid dynamics basics in designing and building the system. I come from an Mr2 backround and have designed my own custom system which happens to work wonderfully!

In the Mr2 world if you want a good I/C for 350whp+, you either have to cut up the trunk to fit a large core, or go the a2w route. I went the a2w route and have not looked back since. Intake Temps are regularly below ambient and after continued boosting, the recovery time to @ ambient temp again is less than 30 sec. oh yeah I forgot to mention that a good a2w system has to have a good volume of water for it to be highly efficient on the street where you don't have access to ice to cool the water to below ambient again. besides the heat exchanger ofourse.
Here are some old pics of when I first installed it a few years back.




Te second picture is in the Front compartment of the car, under the "hood".
I placed my Heat exchanger at the front in front of the radiator where you guys would nomrally place a FMIC. instead of cooling air, my fmic cools the water to my actual i/c in the back!

[Kingtal0n]

Thats funny, I just tuned an MR2 with the air-water intercooler. The wastegate was set at 15psi, on a stock 1ZZ I told him that would probably be too much because of the compression ratio. He didn't care... said he was building a next engine anyways, so I did it anyways...

She took it like a champ. I was surprised. And as a side note, the temperature of the water in the intercooler barely moved, but again this was only maybe 28lb/min of airflow max.

have pictures somewhere... if want

[Road2Perfection]

Awesome to get decent replies

but as you said, Vmount, and fmic is to easy route, and there is no point in not.. or is it ?

in my case I believe it has some merits


I struggled my ass off with temps for the engine, even with a radiator that's big..
How ?


This is a street car, so vmount is out of the question, also, leather interior in black and being driven as a daily as well as a track car I got a air conditioner.
Got tired of taking pauses cause the powersteering fluid boiled,
so I got a power steering cooler in the front, add these and the engine temp starts to rise, with the Intercooler in front of that again, you end up with oil cooler, PS cooler, AC, Intercooler before we even get to the radiator.
I actually have kept all the stock luxury items while getting a 400 whp capable build, well the bottom end is up for a lot more, but a P12 VE head before I'll go for more.
why throw away money on a stupid DE head that will never flow ?

I've modified a few crossbike (450CC) radiators, welded them together and placed them where the stock one is placed, using paper thin metal to duct the air, and placed the oil cooler on the other side.
If i get too high temps at the dyno in about a months time I'll just add more cooling.
It's naturally very modular this design.

The overflow tank is very very small, the core isn't too big, so weight isn't a big issue I think adding a kilo or two.

[Road2Perfection]

Intake temps with a honda CBR450 radiator setup, this is VERY small, however, did not exceed 50C, on stock intake with the hot water running in it, the temps out of the IC is actually just 44C.
will take a little test with one more radiator core and add them along for sizing purposes of the real radiator core.
However, the weight is not more than a fmic, complexity yes, and no-one here got any knowledge about how big stuff have to be.

I run 1.1 bars on a 3071R now on a stock head and intake, however to 450whp on that turbo I gotta have a bit more cooling, so hence my fiddling around with radiators, I hope to see less than 10C above ambient now out of the IC unit with minimal sizing up on the radiator core setup.

Once I know how big I need to make the radiator I'll take a AC condenser, cut it to size, weld it shut again and mount it for my sr20vet setup
I can bring them logs from my ecu.
You will notice that once the water is hot in the engine, the intake temps won't go below 34C-37C, same as the fmic, something funny bout them intakes that heat the air a-lot.

shut em and get a thermal plate between the intake and head seems to be more resonable than actually going for larger ic's on the sr20 off the bat, as I cannot reach lower cruise intake temp with either fmic over stock ic, and waic, they only improve boost temps a-lot.

On another side, I got no surge compressor house on the turbo, yet I receive very very little turbo flutters at lift off after full boost, seems bov is not needed with waic ;D

[quickdiversion]

Originally Posted by Road2Perfection

Awesome to get decent replies

but as you said, Vmount, and fmic is to easy route, and there is no point in not.. or is it ?

in my case I believe it has some merits


I struggled my ass off with temps for the engine, even with a radiator that's big..
How ?


This is a street car, so vmount is out of the question, also, leather interior in black and being driven as a daily as well as a track car I got a air conditioner.
Got tired of taking pauses cause the powersteering fluid boiled,
so I got a power steering cooler in the front, add these and the engine temp starts to rise, with the Intercooler in front of that again, you end up with oil cooler, PS cooler, AC, Intercooler before we even get to the radiator.
I actually have kept all the stock luxury items while getting a 400 whp capable build, well the bottom end is up for a lot more, but a P12 VE head before I'll go for more.
why throw away money on a stupid DE head that will never flow ?

I've modified a few crossbike (450CC) radiators, welded them together and placed them where the stock one is placed, using paper thin metal to duct the air, and placed the oil cooler on the other side.
If i get too high temps at the dyno in about a months time I'll just add more cooling.
It's naturally very modular this design.

The overflow tank is very very small, the core isn't too big, so weight isn't a big issue I think adding a kilo or two.

I'm rather confused as to why it matters how meanings you have stacked in front of your radiator, don't you have a fan behind it?

[quickdiversion]

Originally Posted by Kingtal0n

Thats funny, I just tuned an MR2 with the air-water intercooler. The wastegate was set at 15psi, on a stock 1ZZ I told him that would probably be too much because of the compression ratio. He didn't care... said he was building a next engine anyways, so I did it anyways...

She took it like a champ. I was surprised. And as a side note, the temperature of the water in the intercooler barely moved, but again this was only maybe 28lb/min of airflow max.

have pictures somewhere... if want

How would pushing as close to 50lb/min effect the temp of the water. Hx35 7 blade claims out can do almost 60 lb/min. I'm pushing 30 psi out of its around 40 max.

[Road2Perfection]

Originally Posted by quickdiversion

How would pushing as close to 50lb/min effect the temp of the water. Hx35 7 blade claims out can do almost 60 lb/min. I'm pushing 30 psi out of its around 40 max.

40-42 lb/min is absolute max for this setup, you get far bigger setups, check motoiq's land speed racer (using a icebox)
this core I'm using has a 2,5 inch intake, great core, efficiency is seemingly high.

[Road2Perfection]

I got a 1200 second run showing the increase in temp.
The radiators are two from honda CBR 450, their size is not big.
Pump is a 35 L/Min 1.3 ampere pump made for intercooling.
the core is a cylinder 2.5" one.

in No way have I managed to exceed the weight of a fmic, or gotten much worse temperatures with the crude radiators we stuck on
I run stock intake with heater, throttle body with heater, and in the bench with one of the radiators, one added later we never exceeded 55C.

My conclusion, this works, it's not much better than FMIC, you guys most likely wont do this, but I like to do things and test it
I'm just amazed by the efficiency of the WAIC.

Two things I actually can say I notice.
Throttle response is slightly better.
There is absolutely no need for a resirc valve or dump valve to "protect" the turbo, I struggle getting sounds, I ran 1.6 bar and I managed to get.. some sounds, so the GT3071R seems to be living a too good of a life with it..
seems like I'm never gonna get a EFR turbo.

Attached log from my ecu in above post
And here is a very stockish look of the engine because the officials can take my plates for tuning :P