Intercooler fan

[Marky]

Yes, I searched, here and gooooogle

Has anyone here tried running a fan on a top mount cooler?

I found an old thermocouple thingy in the garage the other week so got curious - measured temps @ afm, intercooler inlet and also outlet. The results were somewhat disturbing! Car is a normal GTB, boost is about 15psi on both turbros, standard intercooler.

I've got an enclosed pod filter, grabs air direct from inner guard - temps after the AFM hovered around ambient and never really budged, which makes complete sense. Even sitting at the lights it has a constant supply of air through it so never really heat soaks I guess.

Pre intercooler got really nasty - it didn't update that fast but saw it hit upwards of 80 degrees (the device read only to 80 ) on a few occasions, always when just fanging round on primary with a lot of start/stop driving.

POST intercooler was the real dodgy bit - if I was doing over 50kph, then it worked suprisingly well, given a cold night it'd be down to 20-30 degrees depending on heat soak before hand - if i was over 80kph it would work well and not really budge.

The ugly bit was the heat soak, sitting at the lights for anything more than 15-20 seconds would see temps start to climb, and climb - would be getting up to 60 degrees by the time I started moving. Dropped right back down to ambient if I drove like a normal person to 50kph within about 20 sec, but if I nailed it off the lights then wooo you could cook an egg on the thing. Skyrocketed instantly and only started to drop over 60-70k's.

Now reason I ask about a fan is that this car is 95% driven around town. Gets the odd open road trip but most of its life is tootling round chch. I've looked online a fair bit and can't find many people who have tried it on a scoobydoo, but a lot of 4x4 guys seem to reckon it's a damn good idea. I can't imagine a wee 7 inch fan will block things that much at speed, and it's purely to try and curb that heat soak at the lights or when parked. Getting in the car after I'd gone into the shops or something it would be a good 60 or 70 degrees.

I like the idea of a water sprayer - however that's just trying to help things after they've gotten ugly - just thoughts on if this would help before you're even driving quick?

[ADIKT]

And where do you plan on mounting the fan on a stock intercooler?? bugger all room

[Joker]

plenty discussion on here before : might not be around still/on pre chrash forum lost forever

basically any gain is a loss / block airflow at high speed reversing desired effect

[pl0x]

Marky - I reckon try it. small fan covering half the IC, then half still good for flow at higher speeds.

Report back with results

[Guest]

do what that monkey did in the states and put like 5 fans in your bonnet and drill holes so it looks gangsta as...think he said it helped a little with heatsoak...

dunno how you would fit it would have to be very slimline.

[kwikaus]

Left field a little but what about using air, a pipe across the front of intercooler with some small holes drilled into it, conect up to a airbag compressor, wont block the intercooler at high speeds and would move air through the intercooler when parked at lights.

[Joker]

add co2/poisen

[Stoffa]

is there enough room underneath to pull air down, then it wouldn't block airflow

[Guest]

bit random probably dumb but i wonder if you could over spin the fan or something with the air speed on track/whatever? or would you turn it off when you start to drive?

[ADIKT]

 kwikaus said:

Left field a little but what about using air, a pipe across the front of intercooler with some small holes drilled into it, conect up to a airbag compressor, wont block the intercooler at high speeds and would move air through the intercooler when parked at lights.

That's actually onto it. Use a compresssor in the car to fill a tank. Then have a switch to open a valve and send 130-220psi worth of air through a pipe with holes drilled in it straight on to the inter cooler. Kinda like those sprinkler hoses for ya garden?

From my experience with compressed air in cars is it can be botherin loud too!!

[subieboy]

 pl0x said:

Marky - I reckon try it. small fan covering half the IC, then half still good for flow at higher speeds.

Report back with results

Motorcycle fan assembly FTW!

[kwikaus]

 JoKer said:

add co2/poisen

Yeah yeah and hook it all up to a swicth

[Joker]

might as well run a filthy big ice box and waic from early legacy/soopersubaru's cooler

[DRFVDR]

what about like 4 or 6 PC cooling fans they are small and 12 volt

I always thought running a WAIC with the inlet pipe wrapped around the cold side of the aircon hose work would be cool ( pun intended)

[WRXONP]

My opinion is fans work great - of you can get fans that push more air than what the wind does at 80k then you have a win win all around - I run twin blow through fans on my radiator ( a lot bigger I know ) but they defiantly keep it colder than the wind ever could ( with a front mount in its way)

I've seen those pc fans thy are ball bearing and man they do some

High revs - with a relay giving them straight battery voltage of you cover the core that would push a bit of air through it

[Joker]

energy required to run them : over : energy gained...

[Marky]

I might give it a whirl one weekend anyway, there is room under the cooler to get a fan mounted (like a little 7" one or less if I can find it), most of the feedback I've seen looks promising (found a heap of 4wd forum types who swear by it and got good, measured results) - cause front mount kits are so easy to throw on a suby most never bother. Have found they were quite popular on the old GT4 celicas too?

The big thing is I don't want to make more power, I just want to try and tame the heat soak a bit - the cooler itself works just fine at speed and the surface area a little fan will cover surely can't be that much when compared to the whole core.

Joker - energy a fan uses, no way it'll draw enough power to be noticed, hell the car has an aircon fan sitting there now I'd just use if it weren't too big for the job. I see the point if you were trying to lower temps with say using the air con, or a super beefy fan to try and cool more - if I could I'd just have it on a speed related relay or something to flick off at speed. This is purely just to help manage the one (?) downside to the top mount.

[soopersubaru]

From a "hot" standing start at intersections..WAIC work best,For the every day road car.

For racing flat out...Front mount AAIC work very well

For the rally car...Hi pressure finely atomised water spray onto the AAIC (TMIC or FMIC) works better than a WAIC (without spray) due to hi engine loads and relatively slow forward speeds.

OPINION:- Fans will give you some result...But seriously consider your application before spending the cash.

There are more effective ways to cool charge air.

Water Spray on at 5psi would be the best/cost effective solution. Opinion that is!

Cooler charge air will return more wheel power regardless of how you achieve it...So go for it!

[Joker]

ok I was working on a mitsi delica van : have pix of its fan under the teeny tiny tmic........

[Joker]

[ODB]

have you tried using I/C water spray?

Different approach to same problem but easier to run hose than a fan

[D-Style]

Old shool Pajero had a nice small I/C fan.

Have Fan operate at idle or low speeds, add water spray while fan operates. This would provide good cooler while waiting at lights etc. Without water you would just be pushing hot ait around.

I would get a nice low profile Brushless fan with a speed control.