Out of curiosity, has anyone actually weighed these intercoolers? I'd love to see the actual mass of the eBay cheapies vs. STI stock vs. some of the pricey name-brand models (Perrin, APS, AVO, Blitz). Ideally you want the lightest intercooler with the largest surface area; less metal to soak up heat and store it, and more area to cool when air blows across it. This is assuming that the intercooler isn't too restrictive to airflow to negate the gains!

I was certainly surprised at how light the stock WRX intercooler is, and the APS I upgraded to was just a bit heavier. The end tanks of some of the eBay knockoffs look extremely large and heavily welded, but they may save weight in the core.

Has anyone ever made a copper intercooler? Ounce for ounce, copper is many times more efficient than aluminum at transferring heat... It would be pretty fragile, but you could just use copper for the core and aluminim for the outside casing.

 

hmm, think you mistook my point, I was actually saying the stock stamped STI top-mounts have less thermal conductive mass so would resist heat soak much better than the heavier cast tank top-mounts. Driving for a couple minutes cool the cores but the end tanks are still hot as hell, either way any top mount air-to-air is going to be compromised, its only a matter of whats the right size for amount of cooling versus its amount of heat soak, without actually testing each one in differnt conditions with a air intake sensor we can only speculate. Thats why the best thing to do with a TMIC is convert it to an air-to-water intercooler, and that exactly why you want the stock STI TMIC

as you can see in this pic, a side effct of the stamped construction on the stock TMIC, the core sits about 1/2 deeper than the sides on the top and bottom,



this makes a perfect tub that only needs to be capped off on both sides with a 3/16" thick sheet of aluminum like this.



A Yamaha YZR 600 motorcycle radiatior makes a perfect heat exchanger that fits perfectly right in front of the radiator



these can be bought off Ebay for NOTHING, I got mine for $35, heres one that went with for about $30 they all come with a handy 12v fan to you will use as well
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...RK%3AMEWA%3AIT

nice 1" thick core, should come with a radiator cap too which is handy




this raciator comes with 1" outlets, but you will be using 1/2" hose fittings, so cut these off and plug them



heres the radiator with the 1" outlets cut and plugged and a brass 1/2" 90 degree hose fitting fit into the stock temp sender outlet. the radiator already has a 1/2" hose fitting directly diaganol to this spot from the factory, thanks Yamaha!



for the pump, heres 2 Bosch electric water pumps, both 12v centrifugal constant use units. The middle one is out of a mercedes, the same unit is used on VWs and can be found off Ebay for about $30-40, the one on the right is a Ford Motorsports upgrade one for the Ford Lightning AWIC. These can be bought new off Ebay for $80-90.



Should have the whole thing put together this week, I'll post more pics as the project progresses, you should be able to do this yourself with hand tools and NO welding, and keep it around $150, stay tuned

 

Wouldnt the bigger endtakes soaking up the heat be better than the core taking it?

I dont know, Im just trying to learn more....Ive always read that people got more power with larger topmounts over the STi ones...

Yes the FMIC will be ideal for heatsoak but the installation, bumper modification and cost are a little to much for me. In my experience with the stock turbo, I dont really feel the effect of heatsoak with my big ic...and it can get REALLY hot sitting in stop and go traffic in the summertime.

I do agree that the size of the ic you choose should match your turbo. Hopefully mine will match my 18g well

Nice project you got there, looks awesome!

 

thermal dynamics law dictates that heat will always travel to cold, so how big and efficient the core can cool will be compromised by how much much heat is under the hood and how big your endtanks(heat sinks) are. Like I said, I dont have an exact figure on how hot and for long long the big intercoolers can go before they become interheaters, but you cannot change thermodynamics. Ideally, for a air-to-air TMIC you would want plastic endtanks like the ones on the new WRXs, theres not many better insulators in the world than plastic, but I dont think you would find any companies that would make larger aftermarket ICs with plastic endtanks since people would think they looked cheap, oh well

as for my AWIC, the heat exchanger is slim enough to slip between the front of the radiator and behind the bumper beam, so no cutting of anything

 

<----R-tard?

Krinkov, what are you doing with the sheet metal? I'd like to give this a shot since I'm cheap and broke. Looking forward to seeing more pics.

 

cap the air-air core off to make it a water-air core

 

cool beans looking good hope it works so i can try it out

 

OK, now I'm reeeeeally lost. What part gets filled with water/ where does the line go into the IC?

 

that area that is now sealed off by the aluminum sheets is filled with water, the water outlets are not installed yet

 

OK, i think I'm starting to get it. So the holes get drilled in the side of the IC? one on each side I assume? How are you getting the sheet metal sealed to the IC?

 

right into the plates, than water gets pumped in, gimme a couple days and you'll see

 

i look forward to this craziness.

 

Have any Subaru models come with air/water intercooling? I'm really curious about your results with this; it looks very similar to a watercooling setup for a PC, scaled up.

Get some temp sensors and put one at the entdank on the turbo side, and one on the intake manifold and measure the temp differential!

 

yeah, the old liberty came with one, heres a pic of its IC swaped into an impreza



Im not going to bother doing any very detailed before/after temp difference results, I suppose idealy I would take intake temps at the TB before and after, but since those temps are not static I would have to spend quite a while before the install and afterwards monitoring and recording the temps durring different driving conditions,outside temps, boost levels, etc, to get any meaningful results. And Im just really too busy/lazy to do all that

Im going to keep it a bit more simple, since we already know that XX temp of water through the core is going to carry away more heat from the IC than the same temp of air through the core, all Im going to focus on is monitoring the water temp entering the IC to make sure the the radiator and fan are doing their job, if I can keep that in the range I want I'll know the water is doing its part once it gets in there

 

are you gonna do a write up on this once you get it done? If not I'll have to bother you with a bunch of questions