Intercooler on NA L28

Anyone got any opinions?

Of course you do. I mean anyone got any opinions whether adding an intercooler to an NA engine increases power? I guess the question is whether the drop in air temperature fully makes up for the added restriction to air flow. I guess thats why it works ok on turbos because the air is forced through?

No point.  The intercooler works on a turbo because the turbo itself induces heat into the intake air as a byproduct of increasing its pressure, as well as from the housings themselves.

On a naturally aspirated car, all you'll do is give yourself a stupidly long intake tract, the bends in which will restrict flow.  I'll have to dig up the site I was on the other week, as it had some staggering figures on how much straight pipe one mandrel bend was equivalent to.  The intercooler will also pose a restriction due to its internal design.  Even on turbo cars, adding an intercooler where one wasn't before tends to give a pressure drop.

The equivalent of intercooling on an NA car is to feed in an efficient cold air duct which rams in air from the front of the car to the air filter.

yea, just like that.....

So in other words its just a large cold air intake. IMO I think just a pod filter cold air intake would be better as it would force cold air in quicker. You could try it and provide feedback, results speak louder than misinformed opinions.

ADD, how would a pod filter force air in over a flat panel filter? In an atmo engine, the intake will always be negative atmospheric pressure, the most it would be able to do would equal atmospheric pressure at full noise, the pod filter would create an equal amount of restriction as a flat panel, there's no gain to be had from flat to pod the two would have the same surface area as each other. In theory the front mount air filter would suck more cold air with a surface area of 16inch by 8.5inch, as opposed to a 2.5inch pipe as a feeder to a filter sitting in a hot engine bay in the first place. In theory it seems like it would work better.

Ive seen many track car with there pod filters hanging just below the front headlights in full flow of the air, for this same reason, full cooler air compared to the engine bay heat. They use a pod filter not because if flows better, but because it can suck air in a 360 degree direction, which a flat panel can't do, and would also be to big to setup as such as this.

If you were to go this far, you would cool your fuel with a little front mount cooler, to make the fuel more dense along with the air going into the combustion chamber. I have this setup on my 32.

You can buy spacer kits for inlet manifolds that cool the intake charge air that's supposed to work pretty well i here.

With the holdens and LS1's, OTR's or over the radiator intakes were proven to increase quarter mile times due to the air being able to 'force' into the throttle body once the car was at speed. The actual surface area of the long skinny panel filter was approx half of the original panels surface area, so I could never understand how they improved performance so much......but still bought two.

By the way those pretend intercooler air filters are for transgender's with Excel's, to go with their electronic BOV's. Get a turbo so you can have an intercooler or stay away.

 

yea, just like that.....

bahahaha.  That's gotta be up there in the greatest rice mods of all time 

What about a pod filter at the front with the pipe back to the plenum going through a dry ice box?  It's highly dangerous and expensive for the results but would work 

It would be easy and make more power to just use nitrous to cool intake air. Either that or get one of those car fridges and plum your intake air through that.

mtopxsecret6 read my last sentence that is my disclaimer. 

Was just thinking of alot of air being forced down a pipe into whatever setup is (efi/carb) being used. My Bad!

Nitrous is injetced into the cylinder because when it's burned, it creates oxygen which lets the petrol burn more efficientlyl; I've heard it called "chemical supercharging". I'm not sure if a very fine mist of water is sparyed near/on the intake air would cool it enough to make a difference..

 

Eh, just make sure your filter isn't around hot air and that should be enough!

partially correct.

Oxygen is an oxidizer (who would have thought ) so you are right in saying that it allows the fuel to burn more efficiently.

However in an engine it also cools the air quite a lot, allowing it to be denser, and utilise more fuel with that denser air.

When you inject Nos, you also need to inject more fuel, to keep the proper ratio with the now denser air, but also because the extra oxygen released as the nos seperates will burn with the extra fuel.

end result, power.

And according to one movie, blue/green flames and self ejecting floor panels.

 

And according to one movie, blue/green flames and self ejecting floor panels.

LOL i remember when that came out and one of the doosh bags i know started telling people that what happens when nos gets used blue flames at the back and ulike in some warp speed everythign goes blue infront of you.

i slaped him and told him to jump of a building for saying that as  he will do rest of us justice him not being around.

Galderdi what u been takin or talking to someone that has been taking some good stuff to come up with these wierd ideas lately 

LOL 4stroke to 2 stroke and this 

anyway not going to go into detials what happens its been said above

but to add to RB30X comment about raming air into LS1 for better pperformance is quite true and been around for last 35+ years.

Camaros, firebirds, mustangs corvettes etc.... all had this in the hot days of muscle car wars back in the mid 60s and early 70s. u win a race on sunday people buy it on monday.

they refered to as RAM Air and it proven to give approx 5mph and reduce the time by 0.25s on the 400m not bad for putting a hole in the bonnet and adding a scoop for fresh colder and somewhat forced air.Thats in a very "aerodynamic"  (NOT) 69 Mustang.

though that NA "intercooler" on civic (had to be civic) sure looks from a distance as an intercooler. that perpex cover with small holes kinda defeats the purpose of it... Im sure that cost a fair bit but u get lot better performance with a decent pod placed in the right location and lot of leftover dosh to spend on tune and better jungle juice to increase power.

none mentions fuel in increasing power... put some avgas or c16 and see how it goes than 

C16 at about 4-5 dollars a litre would send you broke fast

Running avgas in your car is not a good idea

Its all about heavy tops so it doesnt flash off in plane wings

That means its hard to light it may be high octane but thats about it

You will not be making much more power out of it

ahh its the timing giving you the power

Just an additional to this....  With the ITBs on my alfa V6, I was running little motorbike pods on the end of the throttles until I built the airboxes which I had in mind from the start.  When I finally built the airboxes, and ran the inlet through a pipe welded into the inner guard which ends up in large Unifilter foam elements behind the headlights, I noticed about a 15 degree drop in intake temperatures in the ECU, which brought it to about 3 degrees over ambient temperature.  Not to mention once it does heat up in traffic etc, it cools straight back down once on the move at 80km/h, and within probably 2 minutes is back to normal temp, where before it would only drop a couple of degrees from the heat it built up.

The two filters I have in it are not ducted to in any way, they simply suck air from the space behind the headlights, which is essentially sealed from the engine bay and the wheel well.  The only point air can enter from is just behind the front spoiler, and its at 90 degrees to the direction of airflow, and is a little higher than the lowest point of the spoiler.  I'm sure with a small scoop hanging down into the airflow I could bring the intake temps down a couple of degrees further, possibly 1 or 2 below ambient with wind chill factor, but I'd then be ramming road spray etc directly into the filters....

So yes, getting your filter out of the engine bay and sealed off from it best as possible is definitely worth it, and makes a huge difference.  Seems like Galderdi has already done this, and unfortunately I don't forsee a huge improvement in intake temps resulting from adding a duct to it.  Can easily be checked if you want to prove the point, install a temp probe inside the intake, being sure it can't get overly heat soaked by the piping around it, then dummy up some cardboard ducting around it and see how much the temp drops.  In this case I'd guess its only a couple of degrees above ambient as it is now, so there will be minimal gains...

Ram effect however, is a different story...  If you can seal your filter off in such a way that the only entrance is being force fed by the airflow at speed, the engine doesn't have to suck anywhere near as hard to pull the air through the intake, and at some revs with enough ram effect may actually not need to suck it at all.  This is where a manifold pressure guage comes in handy.  At wide open throttle, you should see atmospheric pressure between the throttle body and valves (the same pressure you will see before you start the engine).  If you are seeing a few kpa less than atmospheric pressure, your intake is too restrictive.  The air being drawn into the cylinder by the piston going down is actually holding the piston up to an effect, and this will lose power.  If however at WOT you get a couple of kpa over atmospheric pressure, you have a very good intake (likely with a good duct ramming air in).

Running avgas in your car is not a good idea

Its all about heavy tops so it doesnt flash off in plane wings

That means its hard to light it may be high octane but thats about it

You will not be making much more power out of it

You're saying it's no good because it doesn't ignite as easy?  That's the whole point of it!  It's wonderful stuff.  Of course you're not going to get more power just putting in your car.  It reduces detonation, that's what high ocatane fuels do.  As Dimitri said, you need to advance the timing, or increase the compression ratio, or if it's a turbo car wind up the boost.

But it is illegal to use on the road and you're supposed to have a pilots license or a log book issued through CAMS as Galderi mentioned before you can buy it.  It's around $3 a litre which makes it quite cheap compared to other race fuels.

I used to run my car on 98 and it detonated a head gasket on 10psi with 10 degrees timing advance.  Now, running on avgas it's running 18psi and a minimum of around 25 degrees timing advance.  So it now has an extra 50kw@wheels from when it was running on 98...............

Or you could add tolulene to your own 98 octane unleaded and brew your own??

well said zedophile. and an easy test liek u suggested to see the improvment if u dont feel the difference. if u dont feel the differnce on your car u dont deserv to drive a performance car but a barina.

i notice in any of my cars when i fill "bad" batch of ultimate98. i only fill up on selected bp stations where i havent experinced "bad" batch.

as for AVGAS not making power you obviously havent used it.

not only it makes power (talkin EFI turbo) it does more kms per liter.

i had avgas (for few weeks) in my S14. "special" cat fitted 

not only the car made power (after its learn was established some 50kms or so) it was smoother. the difference between the two fuels on same boost setting was ubelivable.

with 98 in 2nd ill get a little slide in one direction. on avgas i was trying to keep it straight and away from the gutters.

problem being late model car and white crap on the iside of the exhaust instead of black was a easy giveaway that its running illegal fuel. also plays havoc on exhaust not to say it killed the oxy sensor. at the time avgas was about 2.25pl compared to 90c for 98.

but did it smell good oh my god. felt i was driving a 10sec v8 drag car that wondered out on the street late at night . though not good to smell it health wise.

BTW if u had a cat it would calopse and weld itself pretty quick as it is leaded fuel.

tried c16 and had same and better effect but 4-6 per L its only for racing.

tolulene is the cheaper alternative but not as good as c16 or avgas.

for carbs u need to retune and obviously timing as suggested above. another reason i love efi and learining ecus .they adjust accordingly to what u feed them with and what the external parameters are. got to love the sr20det. 

You're saying it's no good because it doesn't ignite as easy?  That's the whole point of it!  It's wonderful stuff.  Of course you're not going to get more power just putting in your car.  It reduces detonation, that's what high ocatane fuels do.  As Dimitri said, you need to advance the timing, or increase the compression ratio, or if it's a turbo car wind up the boost.

 

But it is illegal to use on the road and you're supposed to have a pilots license or a log book issued through CAMS as Galderi mentioned before you can buy it.  It's around $3 a litre which makes it quite cheap compared to other race fuels.

 

I used to run my car on 98 and it detonated a head gasket on 10psi with 10 degrees timing advance.  Now, running on avgas it's running 18psi and a minimum of around 25 degrees timing advance.  So it now has an extra 50kw@wheels from when it was running on 98...............

Sorry high octane does not mean it doesnt ignite as easy

It just means more resistant to detonation

The fact that avgas is a dead fuel and has less light tops does not make it a performance fuel at all

My mistake, the thousands of people who have successfully used avgas in motorsport over the years obviously had it terrbily wrong....

Yes people do use it on the racetrack but just because they use it doesn't mean they are wining.

If you find a race team thats wining on avgas please let me know. I have some free hp for them

Avgas is blended for a situation where throttle response it not a high factor as well as high output

I have spent lots of time working on race cars as well as building race engines. In my experience we have never seen a power gain by running avgas over other fuels we have however found the timing needed to be turned up to bring back the power that was lost by doing so.

C16 and toluene however is another story

If you are using the injection plenum??, ( dont think you are Greg) you could use the cold start enrichment nozzle as a Nitrous nozzle, but would have to introduce additional fuel to stop lean out. NO2 ( Nitrous Oxide) has two parts oxygen to one part Nitrogen, therefore at stoichiometric ratio of from 13 / 14 parts air to 1 part fuel, you would then need to ensure the inlet tract system will flow the required air.

The fuel system can, with mods deliver the required fuel

If using six runners you would need six NO2 nozzles and six fuel injectors to deliver the additional. The three Weber type carbs would be on wide open and once "armed" a button press will introduce NO2 and fuel at same time, trick is to make sure the quantities are spot on, or "KABOOM"

A little squirt here and there helps plenty.

You can buy Nos bottles and refills quite legally, trouble is putting/hiding it somewhere!