Got a turbo?
Wondering if you can use an interchiller with it? Yes you can
Our interchiller can be used on any car turbo or blower as long as you have a water to air intercooler and AC.
If you don’t have AC such as a drag car that’s fine, we simply need to fit a compressor and condenser (we’ve done this many times) even if it’s 100% dedicated to just the chiller and not the cabin.
There is a lot of benefits to using an interchiller on a turbo application.
First lets discuss a boost gain on turbos.
On a supercharger application we see a reduction in boost pressure usually 1-2psi this is because the air is going from hot and expanding to cold and dense, this is a good thing.
We see a higher CFM via MAF (mass airflow measurements) and obviously the dyno and track show a gain in power.
On the turbo application the same boost reduction is happening, however we actually see a boost gain.
This is because yes the boost was lowered from the air changing from hot and expanding to cold and dense, but also because the engine is now producing more power, which produces more exhaust gas as such the turbo spins faster and more boost is created. As example if you see a 2psi gain in boost pressure this is more likely to be 4psi.
Turbos get very cold!
Because the turbo doesn’t produce much heat until actually in boost it is not uncommon to see intercooler fluid temps as low as -20c (-4f) this again enhances the ability to have even more oxygen go into the engine and make even more power, there is no such thing as too cold, well at least we have not found it yet with the coldest fluid temps so far recorded at -30c (-22f) and this produced even more power.
We see the exact same thing at the track, when we have been caught out before, normally we start the car up 5-10min prior to a run to cool it down, and sometimes we have been caught out and started too late we may do a run with say 5c (41f) intake temps, then on the next run you get down to 0c (32f) and you go faster, we see that every time we have the coldest possible temps we go quicker.
Unlimited tuning scope!
With a traditional heat exchanger system you are limited to tuning only what you can simulate in terms of intake temps on that particular day, eg intake temps going from 40-80c (104-176f) whilst on the dyno. With the chiller we can now tune and simulate all possible intake temps as example you can do power runs at -10, 0, 10, 20, 30c (14, 32, 50, 68, 86f) you can then turn the chiller off and do heat soaked power runs all the way up to 90c (194f) or higher if you desire.
This not only allows you to run more ignition timing for cold temperatures but also remove the correct amount of timing for hot temperatures as you have taken it back to an OEM level of tuning scope.
This also makes it safer, should you ever have any kind of failure, eg intercooler pump, hose leak, AC failure anything, you have now tuned and simulated all possible scenarios and will avoid catastrophic engine failure.
Air to air intercoolers:
Making the swap from an air to air (A2A) intercooler to a water to air (W2A) makes very significant gains in power, if you currently run a front mounted A2A, this sucks for many reasons.
1. You are cooling hot boosted air with ambient air (this is bad)
2. You have to fill and pressurize lots of pipe work from the turbo to the intercooler as well as the intercooler itself which is generally massively oversized in order to achieve any level of cooling.
3. The massive A2A intercooler blocks air flow to your radiator often resulting in high coolant and oil temps
When you make the swap to W2A you reduce all of the 17,000ft of pipe work, the stupid large intercooler and now more CFM is delivered to the engine, cooling is enhanced just based on the fact you are using water in the intercooler being 784x heaver than air and way better at removing heat from air, than ambient air. Then obviously you want the coldest possible fluid running through your intercooler so connected to our interchiller and you now gain even more power.
Air to air and water to air intercoolers without a chiller:
In a drag racing, roll racing, 1/2 mile and 1 mile racing or simply stop light to stop light your heat exchanger or intercooler does not have ANY cooling at all until you are moving, so unless you are at highway speed you are heat soaking. A really good example of how bad this is, is with drag racing. This is typically how it goes.
Lane 3 put your helmets on and get in your car, at this point you start the car, inch by inch you creep forward with no air flow, the system just getting hotter and hotter, waiting for more and more cars to do their runs, then you finally get to the burnout box, the damn thing is getting really hot now, so you punish it some more and rip a burnout, now it’s ready to cook bacon and eggs on there.
Then you inch forward to the start line again no air flow, no cooling, you stage the car and then finally you take off and then your intercooler finally gets air flow, yet it’s all over you’re now trying to cool something off that was extremely hot, you are applying even more heat via boost, it’s game over basically.
Forget about whatever “claimed” HP you produced on the dyno at this point, that’s been eaten up
Yet with the chiller we are cooling down for this entire time, in fact if you want to you can sand bag the other driver by doing a burnout past the tree and taking your time to stage, whilst he melts down you actually keep getting colder.
In short you are gaining power from:
Increased air flow (CFM)
Increased Boost pressure (PSI)
Extremely cold air
Less turbo lag
Unlimited tuning scope
Turbo cars fitted with our interchiller: