Liquid-to-air CAC?

Most of us a lucky enough to be able to mount air-to-air, but I am doing a rear engine swap to TDI, and there isn't much room or airflow to do air/air. Anyone have a source and/or experience with a small, light, liquid-to-air exchanger?

I made my own a few years ago when there wasn't much support of air to water ICs:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8CZtXDdy5avwg&notag=1

the throttle response was unbelieveable.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=129127

He gets to the cooler on page 6.

I had a very successful L/A intercooler setup on my turbo miata. I built it myself, including all the welding. So, I was able to size the parts to fit the engine compartment and still be effective.

Take a look at the pics of the setup at:

http://www.cujet.com/html/other_projects.html

The heat exchanger in front of the rad is a simple motorcycle rad from a 1000cc crotch rocket. Actually any of the liter class bike rads will do. They are very thin, curved and extremely efficient at exchanging heat with little airflow restriction. One trick is to avoid the smaller rads that are "thick". As they do not work well without some form of massive fan (just an FYI).

Chris

cujet said:

I had a very successful L/A intercooler setup on my turbo miata. I built it myself, including all the welding. So, I was able to size the parts to fit the engine compartment and still be effective.

Take a look at the pics of the setup at:

http://www.cujet.com/html/other_projects.html

The heat exchanger in front of the rad is a simple motorcycle rad from a 1000cc crotch rocket. Actually any of the liter class bike rads will do. They are very thin, curved and extremely efficient at exchanging heat with little airflow restriction. One trick is to avoid the smaller rads that are "thick". As they do not work well without some form of massive fan (just an FYI).

Chris

Click to expand...

How much surface area on the CAC? What were your inlet and discharge temps for water and air?

I bought mine here. They were good to deal with.

http://frozenboost.com/

TDIsyncro said:

I bought mine here. They were good to deal with.

http://frozenboost.com/

Click to expand...

Worth while for a TDI? I would love this, and its cheaper than a SMIC

Liquid to Air charge coolers are fairly easy to make, and too terribly expensive. IIRC a universal one is abour 300-400 bucks. You can plumb the system into your existing coolant system or have it's own coolant circuit. Great thing about the liquid to air cooler is it's quite more effecient than an air to air, and it have a huge heat sink, and using a chilled system you can actually have lower intake temps than an air to air cooler (not factoring in C02 spray systems).

One big drawback is if you end up with a coolant leak to the intake you will hydro lock your engine.

Scott_DeWitt said:

Liquid to Air charge coolers are fairly easy to make, and too terribly expensive. IIRC a universal one is abour 300-400 bucks. You can plumb the system into your existing coolant system or have it's own coolant circuit. Great thing about the liquid to air cooler is it's quite more effecient than an air to air, and it have a huge heat sink, and using a chilled system you can actually have lower intake temps than an air to air cooler (not factoring in C02 spray systems).

One big drawback is if you end up with a coolant leak to the intake you will hydro lock your engine.

Click to expand...

Did you mean not TOO expensive? The universal kit on that site is 279 starting. So it looks like it could be done for less than the 700+ than the SMIC upgrade or FMIC...

I need to do something, and soon...

dieselpower04 said:

Did you mean not TOO expensive? The universal kit on that site is 279 starting. So it looks like it could be done for less than the 700+ than the SMIC upgrade or FMIC...

I need to do something, and soon...

Click to expand...

Yeah you know what I mean, not TOO terribly expensive.....

I will seriously think about getting this done...

I think that air to water ICs are best in very crampt engine bays/bumper/grill areas. The Mk4 has a lot of room for routing an air to air intercooler plumbing in comparison to the MR2 or corrado engine bays.

The complexity of the air to water combined with the extra wieght may not be worth the time and effort when an air to air setup fits easily and is relativly hassle free.

I will say that once I added an additional radiator to my set the performance was unbelievable and the throttle response was amazing as I reduced the amount of IC plumbing by 4 feet. With that having been said my next G60 corrado will have a custom radiator & A?C condensor to allow for an air to air FMIC.

G60ING said:

The complexity of the air to water combined with the extra wieght may be worth the time and effort when an air to air setup fit easily and is relativly hassle free.

Click to expand...

Or may NOT be?

correct may NOT be worth it.