has anyone tried water cooling their intercooler?

ROBLITTLER · Post by **ROBLITTLER** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 1:34 pm

where my dad works they service police cars was looking over a new prodrive scooby that belongs to north yorkshire rozzers

and it has a water tank in the boot and a pump that feeds a squirter directed at the intercooler for when your really thrashing it wondered if any body had thought of this i know some evos also have a similar system was just thinking could get rid of windscreen washer and aim it at the cooler or get a spare one and do the same

does it make a great deal of difference or is it just for show mainly. i'm sure richard could find space under that bonnet to fit one and might need it running twin chargers at 3 bar!!

terrastudios · Post by **terrastudios** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 1:40 pm

Hi Rob

Water injection is used quite extensively on high boosted tuned cars as it really lowers the inlet air temperature.

Certainly on aftermarket ECUs (such as Megasquirt) you can configure it to control an injector which is connected to a water supply, so upon high boost the ECU turns the injector on and off spraying a small mist of water in. I believe this is also used if NOS is being sprayed in, as the NOS rapidly increases the temperature, the water does its best to keep the engine from dieing!

Matt

Big Brother · Post by **Big Brother** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 6:57 pm

Isn't it illegal not to have screen washers, I think its an MOT failure anyway

aibast · Post by **aibast** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 7:00 pm

I think the screenwasher wouldn work so well. Cos the pressure moves 2 ways. So youy need to get the squerter system pressure higher than the boost preassure.

owen080808 · Post by **owen080808** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 9:28 pm

I think there may be some confusion here.

Some of you are talking about water injection where a fine mist is actually sprayed directly into the intake manifold, cooling the air making it more dense => more oygen/unit volume => eventually more power etc. basically like driving when its foggy, but all of the time and more scientific. I'm sure someone else will provide a better written explaination of why this would be good but kits are out there/can be home made but you wont catch me squirting water into my engine unless it is very tightly controlable!

What rob has seen is (correct me if i'm wrong) intercooler mist/spray. My mate has an evo with this, controlled by electronics/switch in the cabin it does indeed have its own little tank next to the screenwash.

I was considering plumbing it up on my 480 using the rear screen washer (as my rear wiper is so hit and miss anyway) but decided against it/couldnt be arsed, the way i see it is:

Pro's:
there's an easy to control switch wired neatly to your wiper stalk already, the resevoir/pump is already there,
attaching a 't' and a couple of spare nozzles should be childsplay.

Con's:
Spraying water/screenwash all over the ic/rad (hello extra corrosion),
It could cause gunk to build up between the fins and actually reduce efficiency,
The gain would be miniscule, probably not even measurable,
The 480 has a more than adequate sized ic as is,
For anything other than an all or nothing standing start drag race where your engine bay is hot and the car has no air flowing over it (here the ic may for a short time actually heat the air passing through it) it would be useless
The thermal shock of cold water on hot ic may cause a 15 yr old ic to crack

I say that yes it could be a cool gimic, and if you have done other performance enhancing or a lot of track/strip days it might be fun, but i doubt it would be worth it. save the hassle get an assistant and a huge CO2 fire extinguisher to spray on your ic just before launch

I never felt any performance increase in the evo running it and it has twice the power of my 480.

Just my thoughts, others input would be interesting...

ROBLITTLER · Post by **ROBLITTLER** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 7:30 am

hi yes i was talking about the mist spraying onto the ic not internal water spray. it was on a 300BHP scooby and the ic seemed much smaller than the one on my 440 and was positioned right under the bonnet scoop thingy. the only mod i've got so far is richmod so that runs at about 1 bar boost and i think the ic is still good for that.

if i was going to do it wouldn't put anti freeze in it suppose de ionised water would be the best thing. how sure are you of the thermal shock thing as would it not be a fine mist so gently cooling ?

with the mot issue thats why i mentioned using a seperate tank depending on what the car was used for.

terrastudios · Post by **terrastudios** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:23 am

Surely this is the same as injecting it after the intercooler, but rather than cooling the cold air output from the intercooler as it gets drawn into the pistons, the cooling effect from the water happens in the intercooler itself.

I'd use de-ionised water, not sure of the effects of antifreeze inside the combustion chamber, its horrible stuff anyways with such a sickly smell *shivers just thinking about it*.

ROBLITTLER · Post by **ROBLITTLER** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:55 am

@ terrastudios i still think your getting confused here i'm talking about squirting a water mist at the outside of th ic this evapourates and through the wonder of thermodynamics when a liquid evapourates it take energy to brake the bonds between the water molecules this energy comes from the heat of the ic so the cools the outside of the ic i'n not sure about squirting water into the cylinders and what effect that would have on the running of the engine

480_rocket · Post by **480_rocket** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:57 am

I think if you inject it into the intake, you need a mix of water and methanol or something along those lines. Perhaps a temperature monitor could be mounted in the air stream near the throttle body, and see how much above ambient the inlet temps are.

rpruen · Post by **rpruen** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 5:33 pm

I have plans to use water injection at some point soon-ish. Maybe it will help, maybe not, there is only one way to find out.

Idealy I'd like to inject cooled EGR (condensed), as it does away with the requirement for a big tank, and won't run out.

As for misting the intercooler... It will help to reduce the temperature, but unless the intercooler is too small for the aplication, then it's not going to be that much. Fitting a bigger cooler is going to do the job better, and add less weight.

The 480 intercooler is huge, so any gains are going to be small, better to spend the cash on a free flowing exhaust instead.

Richard

owen080808 · Post by **owen080808** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 2:23 pm

rpruen wrote:
The 480 intercooler is huge, so any gains are going to be small, better to spend the cash on a free flowing exhaust instead.

exactly

TommiS · Post by **TommiS** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 7:22 pm

rpruen wrote:
The 480 intercooler is huge, so any gains are going to be small, better to spend the cash on a free flowing exhaust instead.

It may be huge but it could be bigger

I know one case about 460 turbo, he changed his cooler to same size aluminium cooler than original and dropped about 35 degrees of heat measured from intake manifold. Now i dont know how this affects anything but i just wanted to say that it could be better...+ If you have made it some place or do it yourself you can always do it even bigger than original

hjkort · Post by **hjkort** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 8:50 am

from measurements: spraying water on an IC will drop the temperature about 5 to 10 degrees. Depending on the size of waterdrops/mist, outside temperature and drivingspeed (relative windspeed). The nozzles have to spray the water over the IC in such a way that the IC is covered in a very small layer of mist that will evaporate immediately. Otherwise the water will act as insulation.

Injecting water directly into the manifold will have almost the same effect as injecting 10% more fuel.
- air gets denser and will cool of very slightly. The denser air/fuel mixture is heavier. At the end of the intake stroke the denser mixture still wants to go into the cilinder (more than just the normal mixture) and the valve timing and shape of the cam can be altered to get as much mixture in the cilinder as possible.

- the water in the mixture cools the cilinderwall and brings down the temperature (durability).

- water in the mixture will bring down the starting temperature of the combustion. The water also has to be heated up in compression (like EGR).
This means less NOx, or it can be used to alter the ignition timing. It can be set earlier as the mixture won't detonate as easy as before.

- biggest pro: the mixture contains lots of energy after combustion, used in the turbo to produce more boost, without overheating.

rpruen · Post by **rpruen** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:46 pm

hjkort wrote: - biggest pro: the mixture contains lots of energy after combustion, used in the turbo to produce more boost, without overheating.

One thing you forgot to mention. Hot water vapor is bigger than hot nitrogen (air is mostly that gas), so you get a bit more pressure in the cylinder, even with the lower temperature.

Using EGR, or condensed EGR seems to have become popular on modern engines. And not just from an emissions point of view.

Richard

hjkort · Post by **hjkort** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 2:18 pm

Thanks for adding. I'm not an engine guy, I work with suspensions...

Jamo · Post by **Jamo** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 3:09 pm

terrastudios wrote:Hi Rob

Water injection is used quite extensively on high boosted tuned cars as it really lowers the inlet air temperature.

Certainly on aftermarket ECUs (such as Megasquirt) you can configure it to control an injector which is connected to a water supply, so upon high boost the ECU turns the injector on and off spraying a small mist of water in. I believe this is also used if NOS is being sprayed in, as the NOS rapidly increases the temperature, the water does its best to keep the engine from dieing!

Matt

Guys he's not talking about water injection, it's an intercooler mister, quite common on jap performance cars as standard.

Watermist is sprayed onto the intercooler to aid with heat transfer.

The car i bought had the same system but i removed it as the temp control was naff for when it sprayed.

dave · Post by **dave** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:30 pm

There seems some debate over teh effects of water cooling the IC.

Its somthing i would like to try on the clivo. Although it would be primarly for track days and 1/4 miles. Has anyone done it with definate results??

As said alot of Jap cars use it and if its good enough for Scoobs then its good enough for the Clivo.

Not trying to open another can of worms guys, but a few more opions would be great.

tom-480-turbo · Post by **tom-480-turbo** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 6:22 pm

my brother owns a punto gt and over on puntosports.co.uk there's alot of information about this.a fair few gt's have this installed.i am also planning to use this on my clio.For the small amount of money it would cost to setup the kit, i think it is worth it.

dave · Post by **dave** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 6:44 pm

tom-480-turbo wrote:my brother owns a punto gt and over on puntosports.co.uk there's alot of information about this.a fair few gt's have this installed.i am also planning to use this on my clio.For the small amount of money it would cost to setup the kit, i think it is worth it.

Any links mate???

Do tehy work well on the punto?

tom-480-turbo · Post by **tom-480-turbo** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 5:58 pm

http://www.puntosports.co.uk/forums/sea ... id=1401416 if this link doesnt work then just search for intercooler water spray on their website.mixed opinions on this..seems that it works very well on top mounted intercoolers.how is your clio going...all working now?