Intake Air Chiller LOL

[Ukrman]

Has anyone seen this thing? Seems like an interesting idea.......... just not sure if it actually works

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/S-MAX-Ic ... dZViewItem" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[seboroth]

looks like It could work.

[mitmaks]

interesting idea, just wonder how long it would last though.

[fowljesse]

Wow. $230 for a tube with a smaller tube coiled inside of it. It MIGHT be worth it, if it were a whole system. They'll probably tell you to hook up a CO2 "Cracker", like a whipped cream dispenser that would last less than a minute.
I thought of something like this, when I was making a "cool can" for my gas line. You could run your A/C line through it, on it's way to cooling your car, and have another coil for your fuel coiled with it, that way it cools your intake AND your fuel. That would be worth $230 for a plug and play setup. You wouldn't need an intercooler for turbos, and therefor have less resriction in your airflow.

[tmac4t4]

i wonder how cold it would actually make the air..would be cool to see a dyno test result or something

[RS_OBD'oh_2]

Ya, It's done thru the R and D with an actual company. S-max make some new intercoolers too. It probably won't give you much/noticable power, but it should make the air cooler.

[Mi|<E]

That would cause an assload of condensation on the interior if the liquid running through it is
cold enough. And water in the intake is everyones friend.

Other than that at first look, especially in a turbo system where large air volumes are being pushed,
it will not work well at all. You would need a much much larger surface area with some sort of
surface resistance like a slight curve to allow the heated air to convect some energy to the metal.

Coolant can absorb 25x as much energy as air, its just I dont think that means you can have 25x less
surface area to transfer the heat to.


On a side note - how much liquid nitrogen does 230 dollars buy?

[fowljesse]

Yeah. Think of it like this: How effective woud a catalytic converter be if it only had the catilyst around the outside?
And, if it had a way to keep the condensation from entering the engine, the air would be dry, and that's not as good.

I don't think this thing would be any more effective than icing the IM, or my awesome mod of turning the windshield sprayer into an IM icewater mister.

[Mnemonic]

cooler air will yield better results, on a nice hot day. Lots of guys when going to the dyno will bring Dry Ice with them and pack it around there intakes to cool the air coming into the engine. There are also water coolers which do the same thing, by pumping water into a chamber that surrounds the pipe that brings in the air, thus lowering air temperatures. Then you have your Cryo setups which generally either spray onto the intercooler, or fit in the intake pipe so that air passes by the cooler, making the incoming air temp cooler. All of these have been proven with dyno results to work, but as I've talked to several speed shops and a few buddies, they all generally say these are worthless on your basic street cars, and really only benefit you during the warm seasons.

[mitmaks]

I wonder how well it would work with a dry ice ....

[redmxlookin4turbo]

that thing is weird lookin

[Mi|<E]

I got to see a proper model of these on the weekend.

That version that is linked above must be a wallmart version. The one I saw
had a finned interior and was super high quality. It was off of a Miata, might
have been from flyinmiata.

I might purchase and play with one of these. The unit I can get has its own
little radiator, pump, hoses and all that shibang. The only part im concerned
about is the inlet/outlet was only about 2 inches wide.

Unless ofcourse I find a miracle radiator that allows a FMIC without much messin' around with the front of the car.

[wytbishop]

this is an offshoot of a common hotroding practice from back in the day. Drag racers would have the intake pass through a large box which they would fill with ice. This was especially useful on turbo drag cars...but not much use on the street. the NO2 idea would be a little more useful, but you'd use up a bottle of gas pretty quickly. I think it's still best for drag racing.

[fowljesse]

If you get one, let us know how well it works! I'm skeptical that it would make much of a difference to a high volume of air. Intercoolers have many square feet of cooling. This has maybe 2 (even with fins), but the ambient temp of the metal is much lower..
Now, if you ran coolant through an IC, that would be something!

[wytbishop]

I think it would be moderately effective on boosted intakes for 12 seconds at a time or so.