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Elabtronics Intercooler Water Spray
Intercooler Water Spray
Imagine this:
You are driving along a twisty bendy road in your turbocharged, intercooled car. You accelerate along a straight, your intercooler does its job and cools the turbo-compressed air before it goes into the engine, then you take your foot off the pedal as you approach the next corner. Your intercooler's metal core will have absorbed the heat from the turbo-compressed air and warmed up. It is only the ouside air coming through it that cools the core back down. As you pile on the power coming out of the bend the outside air coming through the intercooler begins to cool it down again - but wait... its a few degrees warmer than it was at the last bend! As each bend approaches and your car slows down, the intercooler gets warmer and warmer and... hot!!
Now, if you had this eLabtronics water spray controller, a pump, a water reservoir and a spray bar the controller would detect when the intercooler was getting warm and trigger the pump to spray water at the intercooler to cool it down. Not only that, the controller would work out that you were driving hard by the duty cycle signal from your injectors and would spray your intercooler BEFORE it got too hot.
By equipping your car with the ELABTRONICS INTELLIGENT INTERCOOLER WATER SPRAY CONTROLLER you will ensure that your intercooler is working at its peak efficiency.
Turbobits are the European distributor for these Australian made controllers. We also manufacture our own spray bar kits to compliment them. In addition to a controller and a spraybar you will need a pump, some tubing and a reservoir in which to keep the water.
Intelligent Intercooler Water Spray Controller
Ref: elab-controller
This intercooler waterspray controller comes complete with temperature sensors that measure the temperature of your intercooler. When it detects that the core temperature is excessive it switches on a water pump that can squirt water at the surface of your intercooler to cool it down.
for detailed product information click...
Price: £119.99
(Incl. VAT)
spray-bar kit
Ref: elab-spraybar
Designed to be used in conjunction with the elabtronics controller this spray-bar will shower your intercooler with fine jets of water. It can also be used without the controller to replace existing spray nozzles on Subaru Imprezas or just on its own as part of your own system.
for detailed product information click...
Size
Choose your size
3 foot (£19.99)
4 foot (£23.98)
5 foot (£27.97)
6 foot (£31.96)
Water Pump
Ref: elab-pump
This is a 'universal' windscreen washer pump. It comes with a handy mounting bracket and is ideal for use with our eLabtronics water spray controller.
Price: £7.50
(Incl. VAT)
Clear Tube
Ref: elab-tube
3m of clear, flexible, plastic tubing for use with our eLabtronics waterspray controller and 'universal' pump.
Price: £2.50
(Incl. VAT)
3/16" Compression Tee
Ref: Nero-tee
3/8" Compression Tee.
Price: £3.53
(Incl. VAT)
3/16" Stem Hose Barb
Ref: Nero-stem
3/8" Stem Hose Barb
Price: £1.18
(Incl. VAT)
3mm Nylon Tee
Ref: NylonTee
3mm Nylon Tee.
Price: £0.59
(Incl. VAT)
More on Intercoolers and Water Spray
INTRODUCTION
Having been asked lots of questions about intercoolers, turbo boost and the effects of water spraying and water injection I set about writing an article to address them. This article was biased towards Maserati Biturbo owners and published by MIE - the international Maserati owner's club.
What follows below is an excerpt from the 10 page article that covers some interesting facts about intercoolers... enjoy!
INTERCOOLERS
There are basically two types of intercoolers, air:air and air:water. Air:water intercoolers have a core that the turbocompressed air passes through that is cooled by water. As it passes through, it gives up its heat to the core and, in turn, the core gives up its heat to the water. The water is then passed to a radiator at the front of the car and gives up its heat to the air flowing through the radiator. Air:air intercoolers are much simpler. They consist of a core that the turbocompressed air passes through. As it passes through, it gives up its heat to the core and, in turn, the core gives up its heat to the ambient air flowing through it. Air:water intercoolers can be neater but most people go for the simplicity of the air:air.
To be more precise about the way that an air:air intercooler works it actually acts as a big heatsink. As the hot turbocompressed air enters the intercooler core it gives up its heat to the metalwork of the core, usually aluminium. As the car is being driven forward, ambient air from outside the engine bay is forced through the intercooler core and the core gives up its heat to the airflow. When we look at it like this it is obvious that an intercooler is not just a heat exchanger - it actually stores the heat! This means that an intercooler does actually work at low speeds when you would expect it not to!! However, following a quick burst of boost at low speed the intercooler needs a shot of high speed driving to force ambient air through it to cool it down or a rest or a water spray controller (more on this later)
With this in mind it is important to fit intercoolers to your car that are going to be efficient. To make an intercooler efficient you need to fit one that is of the correct size for your engine and position it in a flow of nice cool ambient air. Too small and it will not have a big enough 'heatsink' area. Too big and the internal volume will be so big that it will swallow up your boost pressure and create lag. It might even be so big that your boost pressure halves or is nearly lost altogether in the huge volume inside the core - be careful here!! It is also important where you place your intercoolers. Remember that the heatsink properties of the core rely on the heatsink giving up its heat to ambient air flowing through the core. If the core is under the bonnet (hood) and has no airflow from outside then it's not going to work, the core will just heat up to almost the same temperature of the turbocompressed air and be useless.
So, either put the intercoolers in front of the radiator or put them in a convenient place and put ducting on them to feed ambient air to them. The photo above shows the top mounted intercooler on a Nissan Pulsar GTi-R.. In this installation there is a large air scoop on top of the bonnet to force air through the intercooler! The topmost picture shows the ducted topmount intercoolers on my Maserati Biturbo 425.
If you look at the pictures of the installation above, the owner has taken a pair of standard Maserati 430 intercoolers and fitted them to his 1984 Biturbo Mk 1. He's done this by mounting them in front of the radiator and then making up some tubing. His tubes are made from the standard Biturbo pipework that leads from the turbocompressor outlet to the plenum chamber - he's simply chopped them in half and used some silicon hose to make up the gaps!
It is most important that you fit a good pair of intercoolers to your car before you play with the boost. There are, however, other things you can do aswell
INTERCOOLER WATER SPRAY COOLING
Do you recall that I described an intercooler as a heatsink and said that it stored heat before giving it up to the ambient air flowing through it? Well, a very good way of increasing the efficiency of your intercoolers cooling effect on the turbocompressed air is to cool your intercoolers! When a car is being driven hard the intercooler stores up heat from the turbocompressed air and then gives it up to the ambient air flowing through it. Generally a period of hard boost is quite short, for example when overtaking another car or in-between curves on a road. (I say "in-between curves" writing this article from my Devonshire office.) When you accelerate the intercooler temperature increases. It starts to give up its heat to the ambient air a short time after it has started to warm up. When you take your foot off the gas pedal the intercooler, which is now hot, is still giving up its heat to the ambient air and will carry on doing so until its temperature is the same. By spraying a jet of water at the intercooler as you are accelerating, during high boost pressures and for a few seconds after you come off the gas you can dramatically increase the cooling of the charge (intake) air by keeping the intercoolers cool.
Richard J Bridge
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Elabtronics Intercooler Water Spray
