Air to Air or Water to Air (Round 1)

[Toysrme]

Arrrrrrr! We's Pirates is looking for teh gold! Arrrrrrrrrr matey!
I'm use to australian-speak, but WoW! At any rate.
A2A > A2W
In the event that A2A < A2W
A2A + Water mist + water injection > anything this side of an A2A + co2 spray + n2o port injection.

I'm not talking you out of a W2A cooler. You're just trying to use one in the opposite environment that they're suited for. Water belongs being sprayed in a manifold, & evaporating on cooler. Not circulating down a drag strip for 12 seconds at a time. (W2A intercoolers are completely useless down a drag strip & a large waste of money, time, and not the least of which weight!!!) If you want a *real* reason to run a W2A intercooler. Have a daily driven road racing (a real track) car.



I say pick up a normal A2A cooler, and run water injection... I promise, water is very cheap. You *can* fit a tank big enough to do some long term/daily driving use on your rig. (I rolled 3.5-4 gallons of water in my nose last spring)Lastly. It'll flat out work far better than a W2A system.

 

[Pro]

I'm not talking you out of a W2A cooler. You're just trying to use one in the opposite environment that they're suited for. Water belongs being sprayed in a manifold, & evaporating on cooler. Not circulating down a drag strip for 12 seconds at a time. (W2A intercoolers are completely useless down a drag strip & a large waste of money, time, and not the least of which weight!!!) If you want a *real* reason to run a W2A intercooler. Have a daily driven road racing (a real track) car.

i'll pull you up there.

nearly all the fastest cars in Australia run W2A. they use dry ice in boxes built around free-flowing cores.

http://www.rotormaster.com.au/subpage.asp?cid=20

in fact, i believe the honda boys over there use dry-ice cores...?

a W2A has a more stable core temp than an A2A - A2A is very subject to outside ambient temps and can be very intrusive on the engine's cooling system.

CAPA in Adelaide do a very neat W2A cooler good for 420kW.
http://www.capa.com.au/pics/xr6_pack_stage3.jpg

you can get intake temps down to sub-zero with dry-ice cores - the power that would release would far outweigh the weight penalty and the power gain made would be the cheapest available.

 

[Toysrme]

Really? All the hard-core drag people here don't use anything.
Always just a combination of multi-charged turbo/supercharged, turbo-turbo charged, n2o alone, or n2o with a turbo/super.

 

[greybeard]

Really? All the hard-core drag people here don't use anything.
Always just a combination of multi-charged turbo/supercharged, turbo-turbo charged, n2o alone, or n2o with a turbo/super.

"Hard-core" racing without intercooling will mean running methanol or nitromethane fuels, both of which have very low AFR's (i.e. the fuel does the cooling) - not that WAIC is not good for drags.
WAIC is very good in stop-start driving and drag applications (pump fuel).
:ninja:

 

[Pro]

in australia, most teams only use one "power adder" so will have to incorporate a form of aftercooling.

if we use N20 as a cooling medium - it becomes a second "power adder" and puts you in a different class of racing.

i guess you could run methanol or the like, but then that PLUS the aftercooling would yield an even higher power output so why would you not...?

 

[greybeard]

in australia, most teams only use one "power adder" so will have to incorporate a form of aftercooling.

if we use N20 as a cooling medium - it becomes a second "power adder" and puts you in a different class of racing.

i guess you could run methanol or the like, but then that PLUS the aftercooling would yield an even higher power output so why would you not...?

well...the point of cooling is to get a denser charge (more oxygen). Methanol & nitromethane are oxygenated fuels so it is silly to add weight with intercooling. They don't call it "top fuel" for nothing.

 

[Pro]

silly? i don't see anything silly about being bumped up into another class because you wanted to save 15odd kg of core and piping...

 

[greybeard]

silly? i don't see anything silly about being bumped up into another class because you wanted to save 15odd kg of core and piping...

I don't race & have no knowlege of regulations, I'm commenting from a purely technical/engineering point of view. However if removing the intercooler bumps you up a class then I assume there is a clear net ET benefit in removing the (effectively)non-functional weight.
:ninja:

 

[the highlander]

I am still wondering.. why porsche went with water cooling their engines...

 

[Zuffen]

Porsche went to water for a few reasons.

One was it couldn't pass the European noise standards as the engine's internal noise was not deadened by the water. At one stage cars sold into Switzerland ran special sound deadening to meet the Swiss regs which were stricter than the rest of the EC.

Another was they couldn't run 4 valve technology as the heads would crack under the heat load. You can run a 911 for no more than 5 seconds without the cooling fan running (when hot) before you fry the engine. This means break a fanbelt and kill an engine. I've done it. Damned expensive fanbelt! At one stage cars like the 959 ran water cooled 4 valve heads as did quite a few of their race cars.

Another reason was by running water cooling was they could smoothe out the temp changes and run more advance without detonation.

The aircooled 3.2 litre 911 engine was quite marginal in its ability to regulate its own tempurature. Essentially those old engines were oil cooled. They had a very sophisticated dry sump oil system to help and regulate the temps. It also needed a dry sump due to the G forces it could build up on a skid pad.

 

[the highlander]

The point of my question was to demonstrate that an air to water system is better than an air to air system.