Adam M

am relieved to say, we have highlighted a promblem in taht my ambient temp sensor is reading 5 degrees below what it should be!

Meaning I am easily getting ambient at cruise, and often below ambient.

So far I have not seen temperatures above 35 degrees at full boost on the road, and these have been on hot days.

The problem being, that at over one bar of boost, you dont get much chance to check these things, as sustsaining that level, in third fourth or fifth for anything over a few sexonds and speeds are already into three figures.

Incidentally I would liek to take this opportunity to publicly thank bob rawle for mapping my link yesterday.

He has restored my faith in the link product, as the car is driving and idling almost faultlessly, the only quibbles being those that can easily be sorted when I next see him.

To say the car is transformed is more than an understatement. Rolling roads were showing 303 bhp and 279 lbft before changing the intercooler and turbo, thereby reducing the charge temps, massively. That alone should have yielded enormous gains and teh car felt amazing. The link now in has raised boost to 1.3 bar and it is holding beautifully (everyone should buy a hybrid).

.3 bar equates to around 4.5 psi I think, which ideally should have yielded 30ish bhp and 45 lbft. On top of that charge temps need to be considered.

Once I have shown myself what it can do on the rolling road, boost should be droppable to about 0.8 bar, producing a nice safe, insurance friendly 280bhp.

Sam Elassar

hi adam, wellcome back to the link club.

so you have the gauges on and you are not seeing above 35 degrees at 1.3 bar ? that is more like it.
so that is just few degrees above ambient then i thought you called these results
" Alarmingly they are dubious as to the accuracy of some of the claims made on this thread. especially regarding claims of 4 degrees above ambient at well over 1.2bar!"

GavinP

Adam,

Your're right of course on water providing more cooling - the weather is yet another factor in all this....

Whether it will get the intake temperature below ambient, I'm not so convinced...

Thanks

Gavin

Adam M

Gavin, I promise you it can/does.

Fridges work the same way, tey rely on teh latent heat of vaporisation of a material to remove energy from another, namely our food .

Sweating is for the same purpose.

temperature is just heat which is an amount of energy, if you can remove the thermal energy from something you can make it cooler.

This is done by teh mechanism that you know about such as radiation.

It takes a temperature difference to generate a heat flow, so I can understand you saying why would heat flow out of the intercooler making it cooler than the ambient air, because there is no temperature gradient driving the flow.

If you could accept that the pipe work can be made cooler than the ambient, then it is fair to asusme the air inside is cooler too.

So we need to remove energy fro the intercooler relative to the incident air. water droplets on the face of the intercooler require energy to get them to evaporate (latent heat of vaporisation) without increasing their temperature. This energy has to come from somewhere, otherwise the water wouldn't evaporate.

It can come from the air, thereby reducing ambient air temp in the first place, or it can come from the intercooler fins. If the latter is the case then the intercooler must cool down as energy is being constantly driven away from it, faster than the warmer air can replenish it.

So long as water keeps evaporating from it, it should remain cooler than the incident air.

CraigH

LOL

Only alarming if it's not relating to their product eh?

GavinP

I find some of the test results quoted rather strange - as I understand it a 100%+ efficient air/air intercooler is not physically possible.

Apparently only boats (using sea water) or cars using ice boxes/air conditioning systems can achieve it.

Maybe someone can explain to me how to defy the laws of physics?

Thanks

Gavin

R19KET

Gavin,

People are only quoting temps of ambient, or bellow on cruise, not when on boost. This is achievable due to "wind shield" factor.

Mark.

GavinP

Mark,

I appreciate that the figures are off-boost and can understand the "wind shield" (wind chill ? ) factor but that would still imply that an intercooler is 95%+ efficient which is dubious regardless of design.

Another factor which would be interesting to compare is the type of air filter used and the temperature at the filter. This is likely not to be the same as ambient so may provide more insight.

I'm not looking to knock front mounted intercoolers just continue the thread to look at ALL the factors involved.

Has anyone "sealed" the area around the intercooler to ensure that air goes through it as this apparently improves efficiency further ?

Thanks

Gavin

Adam M

Gavin,
regardless of wind shield factor which I(know nothing about ( that's for you Bob),

on misty days, water droplets will collects on the intercooler fins, as these evaporate in the air flow, these will reduce the temp of the fins to lower than the ambient air temp.

This was not meant to sound patronising (I have looked back and it does). I am sure you knew this, given your study of chargecoolers etc, but to those out there who do not, see above and don't feel patronised.

Sam.

I am still dubious about the results. I actually have not managed to look at the gauge since running 1.3 bar as the car is so incredibly quick, I am worried about finding myself embedded in the back of someone else whilst looking at the gauge.

I don't know if the claims are dubious, I was merely passing on what someone who makes intercoolers for a living was saying.
I am sure mine would now be hitting 40. I certainly never saw over 35 running 1.0/1.1 bar. I will check back at post and edit if necessary as I may have inadvertantly suggested this figure was achieved at 1.3 bar which was not the case!

Craig, you tart

It is not my product . I do not represent pace products in any way shape or form, unless they want to hire me as a patent agent.

It will be on the rolling road next saturday. So I will get a chance to see what figures it can produce in that environment, especially as the chance of driving into the wall is much lower with the car stationery and strapped down! I might manage still though

I will be sending the car back to pace, for some tweaking. I have a few ideas for some potential improvements, and made need to enlist the suggestions of people on this board. So feel free to point out any criticisms/suggestions, and I will pass them on.

GavinP

Adam,

I thought fridges work in a similar fashion to an air conditioning system - using a compressor and condensor with a gas changing in properties. But I don't know anything about fridges whatsoever .

I'm sure it is possible to get the air exiting an intercooler end-tank below ambient if it is being pelted with water/snow etc. Obviously core efficiency figures doesn't take that into account!

Unfortunately, the air entering the inlet manifold (which is what I think we are all measuring) will pick up radiated heat (even when shielded/coated) and will result in the air being higher than ambient.

Thanks

Gavin

Adam M

gavin you are right, as the gas freon changes from liquid to gas, it requires energy, thie energy comes from the temp inside the fridge.

In the case of the fridge, as a parallel, a pump would be required to recompress the water vapour back into droplets or mist and then allow them to evaporate again, in a closed system. in the case of the fridge you need to drive this compressor so that you need not have a fresh supply of freon to evaporate away. When driving there is enough mist or rain to supply fresh water all the time.


Anyway, at a high speed cruise on zero manifold pressure, the air flow will be very fast with hardly any heat generation. There is much more exposure to the inside of the intercooler than there is to the pipe. The pipes will themselves be cooled by the air, so after a long sustained cruise, the pipe work will not contrbute much heat to the air flow which can continue to run colder than ambient.

You are also right in saying this is nothing to do with core efficiency or design. This is true. The effect will occur anyway, but you need to be close to ambient with a good core design to see this figure fall below ambient through another mechanism.

GavinP

Adam,

We'll have to agree to differ - I think it would be an exceptional set of circumstances for it to happen.

Anyhow, changing the subject slightly - do you know if Pace are going to produce a lower-cost intercooler (I appreciate you have no connection with the company other than customer / test pilot ?

Changing the intercooler seems to be pretty rare (in comparison to most other marques) and a big reason for that I guess would be cost. I would think that your "deluxe" version (with radiator etc) is not going to be much cheaper than the other products on the market - value for money not withstanding.

I was hoping after seeing the price of the GTi-R unit that the Subaru version would be similarly priced (circa £600) which would encourage more people to upgrade.

I guess that market may be limited to early model cars as Bob seems to like the later version...

Thanks

Gavin

Adam M

Agree it is an exceptional set of circumstances.

But not totally impossible, just takes a long cruise and a damp/rainy day!

I dont think you will find the pace intercooler to be much more than the competitions prces, Obviously they will have to work things out, but pricing themselves out of the market is not good business sense.

Remember they dont have to offset stuff like import duty and postage as theirs are made in the uk.

The other thing to bear in mind is that mine is not the final version but merely a prototype for testing.

We are all hoping for improvements, but needless to say, it isnt performing badly now.

Bobs comments are limited to the version five intercooler, found on the 5 and 6 and obviously the p1. They would still benefit from a front mount due to heat soak issues, bobs point is that it is not as much of an improvement as it is on other cars since the standard item is better than the earlier standard items.

The my01 intercooler as standard is bigger still apparently.

There are still many many version 2s 3s and 4s around which can massively benefit. The benfits are still there for fives too.

From heat soak alone (eg in traffic) ask bob what his temperatures were at the rolling road day. He impressively achieved 340 something bhp, with intake temps over 70 I think. He would have to confirm. Would be interesting to see what effect a front mount would have had there!

Markus

So, would a MY94 WRX wagon gain much from having a fmic over the standard top mount?

Adam M

yes.
loads.

yours has the smallest of all intercoolers.

But it would be unwise to fit this, without doing other mods first.

It all depends on what you have laready.

Eg. it would be wise to have a programmable ecu to take advantage of this!

Sam Elassar

hi gavin

i think the front mount intercooler will help every version on subaru by a considerabe margin. i am talking from my own experience, as i have a MY99 with the good intercooler. one thing for sure my car could not run as much boost or advance before the intercooler addition, so that must account for something. the only problem though i am not sure if just the addition of the intercooler on its own will help. the whole map had to be changed considerably. but the gain at the top end is very impressive indeed. it just pulls like a train until the boost start trailing of as programmed.

so far i am getting 4-5 degrees above ambient on cruise, and 7-8 degrees above ambient on full boost. the only time that the temps rise over that is when stationary but not by much still.

don't you think getting an intercooler that has been tried and tested over hundreds of cars in OZ is better than getting something that is just getting developed ?

GavinP

Sam,

As I said in a previous post, I'm not knocking front mount intercoolers - my issue was related to the results reported which could lead people into having false expectations.

I haven't seen or been driven in either your or Adam's car so I can't comment on either. I have seen Pace's work with my chargecooler radiator which is impressive.

I'm sure you are correct in that people will realise gains with either over the OE unit.

Did you get another thermocouple from Protherm ?

Thanks

Gavin

Sam Elassar

the new thermocouple is being made, i should get it tomorrow or thurdsay.

i am hoping to do a little experiment on sunday at the rolling road day. i am a great believer of testing. there will be a lot of subarus i will see if i can measure the inlet temps at the throttle body on the rollers. there will be a good range of subarus, with different mods, turbos. i think it will be interesting to see what the temps will be like.

Adam M

Sam I agree with what you are saying except that you seem to be missing one major factor.

For a product to become tried and tested it needs to be tried and tested, which is exactly what I am doing.

The pace intercooler is not finalised, but it has been developed to provide advantages over currently existing options. Along with these advantaged come problems which will need to be ironed out. So far I am happy with my intercooler, but it isnt perfect. There is no question however that once the issues that concern me are addressed, it will be without doubt my preferred intercooler of all those I know of.

Markus

Adam,
thanks for the reply. Don't have Link ECU or equiv, maybe one day though!