I have 2 fc ICs and I was gonna weld them together until I thought about using 4 cores. Two in serise and then parellel. Kinda like 2 long 24" cores. I kinda sorta understand pressure drop and I guess that may be over kill. Perhaps I should just buy a decient core to start with. Although nothing will have as much surface area as 2x 24",2.5",7". I think itll be a bit of work also to fit it under the bumper.
What do you guys think. stupid idea?
Sky

 

Why? If your going to weld anything on that pice of ****! you should convert it to a air\water topmount.

 

In series is a good idea. Parallel is not.

 

Hehehe, parallell is good, series is not. Series doubles the pressure drop. More pressure drop means that the turbo needs to work harder to make the required boost at the manifold. When the turbo works harder, it creates more heat, which defeats the purpose of the intercooler.

It's OK Felix, I accidentally posted it backwards once myself.

As shocking as this may sound, some of us like to drive fast for more than 1/4 mile.

I think it would work better if you welded the cores together and made custom end tanks. Also, they may be thin enough to stagger, so maybe you could weld them in pairs with custom end tanks, and stagger them while maintaining parallel piping.

24x14" is going to be a tight fit. I think that you only have about 26x16" or so to work with, which doesn't leave much room for end tanks. You may want to pull off your front end and make sure it fits before you start welding. Also, you should use a S5 front end to maintain your 4:1 inlet to surface area ratio. BTW, the S4 radiator inlet is about 71 sq in, while the S5 is about 87 sq in (more or less).

Yes, buying a decent core to start with would be a good idea. I will be using a Spearco 1-182 in my 20B car, which has a 20 x 15.6 x 3.5" (312 sq in) core, is rated at 1500cfm, and I have verified that it fits if the hood latch is removed.

 

I was um, testing you. Yeah.

 

how much is that spearco one gonna cost ya? I dont really know if that will be too big for me. I should be running about 10-12psi after I finish replacing my vacume lines and secondary injertors. Eventually I would like to run 15-17psi tops. I only want to do this IC thing once so I guess if that spearco one may work good. How much pressure drop are you expecting with your 20b?
Sky

 

make em into air/water cores. it will cool awesome. you have to fab up a system to circulate the water though and give the I/C its own dedicated radiator. its work but it will cool really well.

 

yeah a water to air IC will work great BUT it will only work for a few min before the water is just as hot as the air its suposed to be cooling

 

On my 20B at redline and 30psia manifold pressure (approx 15psi boost) I expect about 1psi drop across the core, and about 0.5psi drop through the IC manifolds. The piping is probabally going to be the killer, as I will probably have about 1psi drop there because of several unavoidable 90deg bends. The good thing is that I expect 70-85% gauge efficiency (90-95 absolute for Corky Bell fans) throughout the estimated max-boost rpm range. A similar 13B would have about 0.5psi less pressure drop, about 80-90% gauge efficiency, but a little less throttle response.

As for pricing, I don't know how much the Spearco intercoolers are now that Turbonetics bought them out. My best estimate would be about $800 for the same 1-182 core as mine, and about $1000 for the 2-248 assembly (1-182 core with custom end tanks welded in place - definitely worth the $ in my opinion). A 13B could use a smaller, less expensive, core at the boost levels that you mentioned.

I highly recommend spending $3 for the Spearco catalog. It has their products and associated statistics so you can see how to select an intercooler for a particular application. This gives you the knowledge to ask the "hardball" questions when looking at other brands of IC's, too.
http://www.turboneticsinc.com/spearco/index.html

BTW, for those who have a Spearco catalog, note that you need to calculate your cfm flow rate in order to enter the charts because as far as I can tell the displacement numbers are based on a 4-stroke piston engine at 5500rpm.

... unless you want to invest in an expensive space-consuming closed-loop system, complete with heat exchanger, pump, solenoid, and associated plumbing. Also note that water isn't exactly light. However, an A/L IC is capable of better cooling efficiency and less pressure drop than an A/A IC.