Water to air on the yamadoo

[Turbo11T]

Well the yamadoo is for sale but. . . I was doing some reading over on the cat turbo forum about the guys over there going to water to air intercoolers. I mayself wanted to try this before but didn't need any more complexity last year on the yamadoo. Either way my thought is I don't have the front heat exhanger on the sled right now so I could use that for the cooler and a water to air conversion would be pretty slick. I know it seems silly to spend money on a sled I have for sale but I think it would be fun. What you guys think?

 

[slash]

A frend is building coolers this way for around 350hp Nytro motors they are way more efficent than air flow coolers

 

[slash]

but its your time and money

 

[tjc]

but its your time and money

I don't claim to know everything but I wonder is it more effective in this application ? I could see more consistent but is it more efficient than sub freezing air temps? Would you use a seperate cooling system or the same loop as the motor?

 

[Wheel House Motorsports]

the problem on sleds is airflow across the core and core size. even thought they work well, the IC usually has either poor airflow in or out of it, and very often air speed is rather slow, and even lower through your IC.

with water being able to draw out a LOT more heat in a same sized core, its going to be much more effective and wont heat soak. when you have a dedicated cooler for the water to air IC. your going to be able to draw heat out of the water just as fast as the IC is putting it in, so your water is going to stay right around freezing temps, and will keep your core fins at the lower temps.

they work, and work well. especially in this application.

 

[Turbo11T]

I don't claim to know everything but I wonder is it more effective in this application ? I could see more consistent but is it more efficient than sub freezing air temps? Would you use a seperate cooling system or the same loop as the motor?

Separate cooling system. I would think that the coolant temps would be at or below freezing with a properly sized tunnel cooler dedicated to just the intercooler. I agree with skidooinit about the air not actually moving through the intercooler at slow speeds like when boondocking. At that point it is more of heat sink and still works but the effiency drops like a rock. For instance if the intercooler is 75% efficent when moving down the trail at good ground speed. 30-60 mph usually. The turbo heats the air from ambient say 30 degrees to 175 degrees at 14lbs of boost. So the air is heated up 145 degrees. At 75% the intercooler drops it back to around 60 degrees aprox. In a slow moving situation where the intercooler becomes heat soaked such as boondocking it is probally honestly more like 50 % efficent So the air is most likely 40+ degrees hotter out of the intercooler. This is huge. Try to jet for a 40 degree difference. And imagine how much more power there is at 40 degrees cooler. Now take that a step farther. Take a water to air intercooler running water temps possibly colder than ambient. It is forseeable to get 95% effiency or better constantly. That would give around 42 degree cold air going into the engine. That would make alot more power than the 100+ degree air of the heat soaked air to air intercooler. So even with a fuel injected motor that can make up for the temp differences automatically the water to air is still going to make substantually more hp.

 

[tjc]

good info right there. thanks.

 

[sam_coleman]

I would say give it a try, its really not too bad to do. I built one for my Apex. The core itself can be much smaller than an air to air cooler as well. The core I used is 3.5 x 3.5 x 12 and it cools plenty. According to Corky Bell in the book Maximum Boost, aluminum to water cools 14 times better than aluminum to air. Where you have unlimited snow for your cooling medium it is really a wise choice. I run 20 pounds of boost and have felt the intercooler on the intake side after a long, hard pull and it is still freezing cold. The plumbing for the system is quite simple too. I use a intercooler pump out of an Ford F150 Lightening and a modified Ski-Doo rear heat exchanger under my fuel tank. The capacity of the cooling system is minimal due to the large cooling capacity of the cooler so the system never gets heat soaked. I will include a few pictures to help give you an idea of it.

 

[sledfvr]

I'm interested in this too. There isn't much air flowing over the i/c when climbing and boondocking. It looks like you can get away with almost no pressure drop on a water to air also. Someone should put a temp probe before and after the i/c on an air to air and see what the difference is. My guess is 25 more hp with a water to air at 15lbs of boost, and a lot more fuel added .