stu21t

I need a custom made charge cooler for my 5. Who makes em?

I can think of
Pro alloy
Spec R
Pace

Thats it.

Who else is there?

Retro Al

iTrader: (1)

You cant go wrong with pro alloy m8 great bunch of guys

TimC

iTrader: (1)

Gary Hurn was over the moon with his AH Fabrications setup on his Nova.

TBH any of the above I imagine would produce exactly what you want.

Jay,

iTrader: (4)

id book ah over pro alloy

GUZZLER

iTrader: (3)

www.jcweldfab.co.uk

stu21t

Cheers guys, will drop them all an email.

stevieturbo

Docking, Pace, A&H, Spec R, Forge, GRS, Radtec, ProAlloy, RSFabrications etc Pretty much anywhere that makes intercoolers will be able to make them.

No doubt there are countless more

Chip

iTrader: (3)

I've got a home made one on my nova that seems to work well.
Garage19 off here tigged it up for me.

I used 2 4wd cossie intercoolers as the core, im sure there are various reasons why that isnt ideal, but seems to work really well so far.




Bit about how he made it here:



And this is it fitted:

Bomber

PWR - http://www.chargecooler.co.uk/index....1f05be85dd53db

stevieturbo

The PWR are compact and neat....Ive yet to read any good reviews on them though.

Quoting nonsense airflow or power figures is one thing, but it doesnt matter how much air they flow if they dont cool the stuff !!

The most important aspect of any chargecooler DIY or otherwise is having the water circulate properly and evenly through the core. Although I guess that's no different to an A2A cooler. Often end tanks are badly compromised and air doesnt flow evenly through them

Chip

iTrader: (3)

My limited experience of PWR coolers (havent ever owned one but have mapped a car with one) was that they just simply dont work. nowhere near enough cooling.
Im sure they do 500bhp of airflow as claimed for the one in question, but they dont take enough heat away, nowhere near.
Be ok for a v8 with .5 bar to make 500bhp, but not a 2 litre engien with 2 bar!


With it being ally (very high conductivity for heat), it will even itself out relatively well if the water circulates in a way that cools one end more than the other, and anyway if one end the ally is 30 degres and the other is 20 degress, and your intake charge coming in is 80 degrees its still going to give up heat to the cooler all the way through so I disagree its quite as vital as you make out.
Yes it will make it less efficient if you have a bit of a difference in core temp from one side to the other, but I would wager its by a few percent not by half or anything like that.

The same is true if you only put cold air over half an intercooler, they do a very good job of evening that out with internal conductance.


One problem people have chargecooler is simply not having enough cooling for the water to air half, thats an issue with the PWR kits in particular, the water radiator was nowhere near big enough, we managed to make the charge cooler work better just by adding more cooling for the water, although it was still not up to the job, I think you'd need liquid nitrogen for that, lol

ozmk1cos

We had a problem with these on 4wds just not doing the job I ended up going front mount (not the best for rock climbs) and my mate had a custom tubular one done that works very well.
We never found anything better than water for putting in the systems either.

Bomber

I use an alloy ERST S1 radiator in the boot (which is fed air from ducts in the rear side windows and a Spal fan that pulls air through it) to cool the water going through the chargecooler. The rads and pumps usually supplied are nowhere near big enough or efficient enough to cool or circulate the water if you up the rad size.

Chip

iTrader: (3)

We did similar on the PWR one, the guy who owned the car fitted a radiator into the rear of the car at my suggestion and it helped get the water temps down, but it still wasnt great for the actual air temps, the coolers simply dont work very well.

On my nova I have two motorbike radiators in the front of it, with a subaru legacy pump, that seems to work well and cost next to naff all.

stu21t

I have got a huge rad upfront and 2 pairs of pipe thats 12mmx5m long, so loads of water.
I have 2 pumps and did have 2 small charge coolers but one has died so ineed a new one and thought id get a proper one made.

My biggest problem is space, i dont have any.

I will email all of the listed firms to see what they say.
I can keep the one i have and get another small one or get 1 big one. Whatevers best really.


There is 1 place i can fit a big cooler easily but it would mean the pipes ran past the exhaust manifold and over the exhaust and the cooler would sit above the exhaust.
If i wrap the exhaust and fitted a nimbus heatshield under the cooler would this work? Or would the exhaust system heat it up too much?
I think it would work and make the cooler itself easier but pipe run more complicated.

Chip

iTrader: (3)

Mine runs close to the exhaust which is shielded in the manner you descrive and ive been fine.

Bomber

I use Nimbus G2 around my chargecooler - as my engine rad pipe runs close to the unit. So far it has held the heat away from the chargecooler ok, but I have not really run the car properly with this so can't say whether this is a foolproof barrier.

stu21t

That sounds promising

Heres a couple of crappy old pics i found
This shows the size of the rad,




Thats 1x12" fan and 1x10" on there so shows the size of it, the chargecooler rad is the front 1



Here you can see the exhaust run...



I was thinking of putting the cooler on the bar that runs across the spaceframe from coilover-coilover, then i can get a nice big 1 on there.
The boost pipe would have to come out the turbo and go backwards

If i could get an off the shelf cooler to fit i expect it would keep the cost down a lot
Oh My how its changed lol

Chip

iTrader: (3)

Looks an acceptable place to put it to me, anywhere is going to be a compromise though.

Might be worth installing a partion that it sits inside and then try and feed that with a small fan from the outside to stop the box itself heatsoaking from the bay in general if its just above the exhaust?

stu21t

I can run some cold air ducts from underneath but not above cos i wanna keep it as subtle as poss.

Where these circle holes are i have now cut the whole section out to let air out, the exhaust manifold is ceramic coated but i will wrap it, wrap the whole exhasust and get a turbo jacket to keep the under "boot" temps down lol.



Next question i suppose is, would this ebay charger be worth a try?
At this price its obviously chinese but its big and if turn 1 end cap round 180 degrees then its ready to use, i just need a few pipes.

http://item.ebay.co.uk/viewitem?item...w=400206201724

Its a lot different to the Ł750 im being quoted so far!

Chip

iTrader: (3)

That link doesnt work for me.

Problem is though with any of us looking at it, we will know nothing about the quality of the cores they have used.

DAN-Saff

That must be 1 crazy car to drive

stu21t

this is what i was thinking, its the front mount of the other 5 put in place to show what i was thinking.






also i measured my rad, its 800mmx500mmx30mm, and i have 12m of 12mm pipework so whatever that works out to be lol

also i have 2 pumps that push 150 litres per hour

stu21t

oh and thanks to whoever(chip?) gave gary my number, i have bought his AH fabrications one

its a tad smaller than the cooler shown above, should work just fine

stu21t

well as i said above, i got a txt from garyhurn and i bought his cooler.
its off his nova that was running 400+bhp, 2bar boost on a t34, t38 then gt30 and he recons he had good inlet temps seeing about 7-8degrees above ambient when on track.
it was made by ah fabrications and specced for 450bhp with room for more.


well im running 2bar through a t34 aswell with roughly 400bhp but my rad is about 3 times the size of his old one and its in the front of the car with nothing behind it keeping it warm, and has much more air flowing through it. also my pumps a little higher flow (150l/h vs 110 l/h)
and just incase thats not good enough ive left my old charge cooler still fitted. its a pace twinpass jobbie, about 8"x8"x8", this with the new one which is about 12"x4"x6" i should have nice cold inlet temps.

i have 2 pumps and twin inlet/outlets on the rad and 2 swirl pots, so both coolers will have thier own cold water supply.




and here it is 1/2 fitted.
i reused most of my old pipework and have to buy 2 more fittings so i will have a little more lag than before but not as much as i thought.




i should have it complete and ready for testing by the weekend as long as the bits turn up.

once it on and working and i know its good enough i will send it away to have new endcaps with different outlets for better airflow and get some mounting tabs welded on. but just wanna see it work first lol


2bar here i come