Turbo kit using Innovate Air-2-Water Intercooler?
 

A2W = "air to water"

After browsing several forced induction layouts, I liked Innovate's air to water intercooler setup built into their intake manifold. So, has anyone tried using this Air to Water intercooler with a turbokit like the Ptuning or Castle Hill Performance setup? The Air to water heat exchangers could be split into 2 units (for each front wheel well with sealed air ducts where the fog light used to be).


Advantages of this Design

1. Shortest intercooler pipe improves transient boost response because there is less volume for the turbo to fill.

2. Radiator gets full unobstructed air flow because air to water heat exhangers would be in front wheel wells instead of in front of radiator.

3. Ptuning style turbo kit takes turbo heat out of engine bay and moves the weight lower and back for better balance.

4. No need for aftermarket hood with scoop for top mount intercooler. Plus, adding functional fender vents mod helps expel heat from the engine bay while retaining original hood.

5. Stealth-sleeper look from outside because no front mount intercooler, hood scoop (like in Rasty top mount intercooler setup), or hood vents.


So, what do you guys think about it? :respekt:

dat heat soak... once the water gets warm...

I had thought about it using something like the PTuning kit, but not integrated into the manifold like the Innovate setup. The Innovate setup isn't really good enough to handle the heat coming out of a turbo, the twin-screw superchargers don't put out nearly as hot of air so that's why they can get away with using smaller or no ICs. I was thinking more like a barrel type setup with the PTuning turbo.

Doug @ TopSpeed built this setup:

http://philbedard.com/pics/topspeed_awic.jpg

The TRD supercharger uses two AWICs built into the manifold, with one on each side. Each one could be plumbed to its own heat exchanger if you wanted. Ken Stout Racing just T'd them together to a single heat exchanger.

FYI they were using that setup in 40 minute endurance racing (Pirelli World Challenge) and didn't have problems with heat soak. The key is running the right heat exchanger and then having a reservoir big enough as well.

Top Speed also ran a twin AWIC system on their twin-turbo Audi R8 V10 they competed in OLOA with and also use it on their Lamborghini systems running 1000+HP.

Those budgets are on a whole different level...

A positive displacement superchargers biggest drawback is heat generation and inefficiency. Sorry to say the sprintex unit is not getting away with anything. Like csg mike said the sprintex and that intercooler setup heat soaks like crazy on track. It definitely did for me.

OP get a a-a front mount intercooler or fabricate some sort of a-w system if you don't road course.

Nobody said it was cheap. :) The lines/reservoirs/pump/heat exchanger aren't all that expensive though.

Modern twin-screw superchargers from Whipple have adiabatic efficiencies of around 80%, which is higher than most turbos. The whole point of them is efficiency. Of course it really depends on where you are spinning the unit and if you are in/out of its efficiency range. I really haven't kept up on where a 210 Sprintex is when you start throwing a 69/70mm pulley on it. I also don't think their Laminova IC setup is very good, it didn't seem to really help people much and in some cases made things worse due to restriction.

80% efficiency, but at the cost of how much torque to spin it? What is the *net* efficiency?

It doesn't matter one bit when you're talking about discharge temps and intercoolers, not power numbers.

If it's heat soaking on track, it's because it's not rejecting enough heat through the heat exchanger at the front of the car. Way too often air-water intercoolers are used with a little heat exchanger at the front of the car that doesn't have anywhere near the heat rejecting capability of the air-air intercooler you would use on a system with a similar horsepower goal. This is very basic stuff that really shouldn't need to be said...

air to water heat exchanger
 

Hi guys thought you may be intrested in something like this.....
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater its from south africa the whole system with the turbo and everything costs R60000

Most Liquid-to-air heat exchangers I have used/seen (in the eaton m90 3.8 v6) community were just as large as an air-to-air setups. It wasn't really until I started looking at aftermarket import kits when I saw smaller compact ones being used.

I believe it. The ones I see on terminator cobras tend to be huge, which is funny, considering that those are generally drag cars...

I've done the air/water setups before. For drag they have some benefits and some downsides as well. The air/water setups are more complex, and less reliable. Not to mention, water holds a lot of energy. This energy is stored in the water until the entire unit is soaked. The radiators will work, but without a fan they won't be efficient enough for the track. Street driving should be ok, but because water holds so much energy it also takes a very long time to cool the water.

Air/Air is still my choice for its simplicity. The amount of transient response you get solely from the shorter piping and smaller intercooler is not very large.

However, I did a build with a twinscroll 30r with A/W and an open downpipe. That thing had such nasty response the turbo would surge even with the ported shroud housing. Felt almost NA in comparison to most turbo setups. But it took everything working together to make that possible, and the added complexity and cost was the biggest downside.

If you do it, it could work awesome. But having done what I've done, I'll take the A/A setup

This.

While an air-to-air FMIC "soaks" faster, it also "unsoaks" faster (between off-throttle bits).

There are specific applications where I prefer an air-water cooler, but not for track duty. For street duty, it should be okay.