Anyone have any info on air to water ic but with using ac instead of water?

[bgbmxer]

So I have been thinking about this for awhile now and my research on the subject I haven't found much info. Basically what I'm thinking is in a normal car ac setup you have your two coils one up front and one in the cabin and a compressor and other items of coarse but i could swear I saw an article using an air to water if and running refrigerant thru it instead of water.

My idea is to use a regular coil out front and the air to water coil somewhere in the passengers seat haha. And use a compressor from a hybrid wanker car so it's not driven by the engine and blow up at high rpm. I have not yet figured out how to control the temperature and the compressor to kick on yet but maybe someone else can point me in the direction of the article I'm thinking about.

[Force Fed Mopar]

IIRC the Ford Lightning used the A/C system for this.

[bgbmxer]

IIRC the Ford Lightning used the A/C system for this.

Everything I gathered from other forums was that it never actually made it into production on the lightning

[Force Fed Mopar]

Maybe not, I don't remember exactly, just remember reading something about it. I do know that Mercedes (and I think maybe some BMW's) use the A/C line as a fuel cooler.

[bgbmxer]

Maybe not, I don't remember exactly, just remember reading something about it. I do know that Mercedes (and I think maybe some BMW's) use the A/C line as a fuel cooler.

That's interesting and sounds expensive haha

[Force Fed Mopar]

Not really, it basically just runs into a small canister made around the AC line that is cold when the AC is in operation.

[strang3majik]

Not really, it basically just runs into a small canister made around the AC line that is cold when the AC is in operation.

My BMW has it...haha. An e30 god local to me says my car is the only one he's ever seen with it...

more or less is just the fuel line running along side the a/c line with a ton of insulation wrapped around it, then back to the fuel rail.


I'll be honest, not really a power difference with air on/off...so it might actually make up for the loss having cooler/denser fuel.

[86Shelby]

There's an aftermarket system for supercharged 32v engines; http://www.killerchiller.com/system_3_page.htm

[Vigo]

I dont think using actual refrigerant in the intercooler is a good idea because you'll have to run the compressor to keep it working and it will add complexity to that system.

I think what COULD be easier and more practical is to have the ac system cool a reservoir for the air/water system, so that if youve run the ac for any decent length of time before getting on it you'll have colder coolant in the intercooler than you otherwise would have. You wouldnt need to run the compressor at high rpm during the actual high boost situation, you'd just be going off the cold water in the system.

That would be simpler. It CAN be as simple as converting your heater core to be part of the a/w system as in most cars you can run HVAC air through the evaporator and then through the heater core. You may have to fiddle with your HVAC controls to be able to get cold air across the heater core in more than one vent setting (defrost, panel, floor, etc).

[bgbmxer]

I dont think using actual refrigerant in the intercooler is a good idea because you'll have to run the compressor to keep it working and it will add complexity to that system.I think what COULD be easier and more practical is to have the ac system cool a reservoir for the air/water system, so that if youve run the ac for any decent length of time before getting on it you'll have colder coolant in the intercooler than you otherwise would have. You wouldnt need to run the compressor at high rpm during the actual high boost situation, you'd just be going off the cold water in the system. That would be simpler. It CAN be as simple as converting your heater core to be part of the a/w system as in most cars you can run HVAC air through the evaporator and then through the heater core. You may have to fiddle with your HVAC controls to be able to get cold air across the heater core in more than one vent setting (defrost, panel, floor, etc).

The car would not have factory ac in it to start most likely so I would be building it from scratch. If I were to try the way your thinking I might as well build a small chiller and then I would have two systems to deal with as opposed to one system to push refrigerant instead of water thru the air to water intercooler. As for the compressor I would think the electric compressors would run a single speed not like the regular compressors that shut off at wot. I doubt I could get the chilled water to 30 degrees below the charge air like I could with a traditional ac system but maybe I need to do more research on chillers and chilled water.

[bgbmxer]

It's prolly not worth the weight and power drop loss on the alternator and just packing the system full of ice would be better but who knows

[Tempted]

I used CO2 to cool a shifter cart about 10 years ago(shop class). It was a Suzuki RM250 motor that was originally water cooled. We ran out of room on our cart and had no way to run a water cooling system. I was big into paintball and had a ton of CO2 bottles around. As it turned out, the motor didn't need any cooling. It regulated itself pretty well. But every time we cracked the CO2 open the motor picked up significant power. We assumed it was due to a cooler air charge and never investigated. It wasn't a very efficient system, the bottles I had(20oz) were only good for about a minute and a half before completely empty.

[RoadWarrior222]

liquid propane injection....

[contraption22]

Seems like an awful lot of added weight and complexity. If you want to supercool your charge air, why not just add a nitrous kit?

[bgbmxer]

Nitrous will probably happen i would like to see how well this setup works to see if it is worth the added weight.

[shadow88]

Seems like an awful lot of added weight and complexity. If you want to supercool your charge air, why not just add a nitrous kit?

Easiest simplest way to lower charge temps and get a little more snot out of it. You would be surprised how much a .022 jet will help and how long it lasts.

[contraption22]

Easiest simplest way to lower charge temps and get a little more snot out of it. You would be surprised how much a .022 jet will help and how long it lasts.

Absolutely!

[zin]

Nitrous will probably happen i would like to see how well this setup works to see if it is worth the added weight.

The thing with nitrous is... it's always "worth" the added weight, as you can simply add jet to make up for the added weight... The trick is having an engine strong enough to deal with it!

Seriously though, turbo cars respond very well to even a small shot of nitrous as it not only adds cooling to the charge it also instantly adds exhaust volume/pressure to drive the turbo, so lag is generally something of the past.

Now, if you need the added HP from the charge cooling all the time, then some of the other suggestions might make sense.

One that I had off the top of my head would be to use an evaporator core "boxed" in on the "air flow" side, then just plumb/split the a/c lines to the core as would normally be done. Kind of like a rear a/c set-up on a van, etc.

You'd end up with something that looks like an air to water cooler, but is running refrigerant in place of water... downside is the parasitic losses from having to run the compressor and the added heat from the condenser, which, might not be as bad as we think...

For a drag race set-up, I like Vigo's idea of using the a/c to cool a reservoir of coolant. Water/coolant has a much greater "cooling mass", or latent heat of evaporation... so a fairly small mass of water can cool a pretty large volume of air before it's "spent"/warmed up.

We've messed around a bit with the owner's ZR-1 by adding an in-line "cooling coil" with CO2/Nitrous going through the coil, while it was just cooling the water going to the stock liquid/air intercooler, we got some pretty impressive results for what little engineering went into it, so I'm confident you'd see some good results. Maybe not something worthy of an SAE paper, but, if funds, etc allow, it would be worth trying.

Mike

[contraption22]

Also note, most A/C compressors are not able to handle high RPM use. That is one of the reasons that in most vehicles, the A/C compressor is cut off at WOT.