Water to Air Intercooler using A/C System as cooler

[Morphious]

I'm building a mud racing truck out of an old beat up 96 dodge 3/4 ton 4x4 12 valve, and will be rebodying the truck to put a 46 dodge powerwagon body on it. This leaves me with a few design issues I need to work through on the truck. The one this post deals with is a solution for an intercooler. The nose cone of the truck has a 22" x 22" area for a radiator or intercooler to fit in it. I'm planning on relocating the radiator to the bed of the truck with electric fans. For the intercooler, I'm planning on using that nose cone space for a water to air intercooler. I can fit a decent sized w/a intercooler in that space.



Now cooling the water is what this post is about. The quick and simple solution is to run a water pump to pump water through a box full of ice to chill the water before it enters the intercooler, I can put the box of ice in the cab of the truck or in the bed of the truck and that would work fine, would need to ensure the water is drained fully before winter time, but that's a small issue. I'd be stuck hauling 20 or 30lbs of ice to each race event. The mud runs are 100 to 200 feet long and can be run in 5 to 40 seconds depending on the consistency of the pit and depth of the mud. So the ice method would work fine for this.



But that wouldn't be the redneck way would it? I've got the A/C system on the 96 that I can use or remove, what I'd like to do is use the A/C system to pre-chill about 20 gallons of water before a run using the evaporator of the A/C system and control the operation of the compressor by a toggle switch in the cab, and a switch for the pump to cycle the water when racing.



Has anyone attempted or tried this?



Morph.

 

[S.Morris]

Why not use water/meth inj and ditch the IC all together.

Friend of mine has landcruiser diesel using

Water/air IC with rad/fan/pump behind cab.

It works very well.

 

[Morphious]

Water/Meth injection isn't allowed according to the rules i'm working within for the class I'm running in. So it isn't an option. I can do the whole radiator/fan combo, but that would give me basically what I'd get off of a regular intercooler. I'm wanting to do something out of the box to get an even better air charge.



Morph

 

[rscurtis]

For a 40 second pull, you definitely won't need an engine cooling system, and a chilled water system may be overkill for that duration also.

 

[Morphious]

well, if I only had to do a single 40 second run, I'd agree with you, but I could be doing multiple runs back to back if there are timing issues or if i'm first to run in the class and want to do a rerun. I'd also be running during the hottest part of the year during 110 degree heat, so I'm not going to go radiatorless. A chilled water system might be overkill, but why not overkill, I'll be running against lighter trucks running small and big block engines in the 400 to 500 hp range. I want all of the advantages I can get during the run.



Morph

 

[Skydiver]

Just an idea. When running a demolation derby we ran a plastic fuel tank for gasoline. We filled the gas tank with water. Using a 12 volt pump we supplied cooling water to the block in case the radiator got hit. Could you use something like this to spray water on the I-cooler?

No one ever knew how our car kept running. We had an analog temp guage and a switch for the water pump.

Good luck.

 

[Morphious]

The main problem is, I don't have room for much of an intercooler in the nose of the truck, it's a 46 dodge body I'm putting on the 96's frame, here is a pic of what the 46's body looks like that I'm starting with.



#ad




for an intercooler area, I basically have 22" x 22" by about 9" deep. That is why I'm looking at running a water to air intercooler. It would also keep mud out of the vanes as well, the mud get's everywhere.

 

[monkeyman]

Windshield washer nozzles aimed at the inter cooler with a water tank in bed, water would have ice in it. You could have a push button on wheel to squirt the water. Or just leave it on for that time, it would take longer than 40 seconds to empty a 10 gallon tank.
Rick

 

[rbattelle]

The quick and simple solution is to run a water pump to pump water through a box full of ice to chill the water before it enters the intercooler, I can put the box of ice in the cab of the truck or in the bed of the truck and that would work fine, would need to ensure the water is drained fully before winter time, but that's a small issue.

All things considered, the simplest answer is usually correct.



Although using the A/C system as you suggest is certainly possible, it also introduces lots of opportunities to screw up on race day.



I would suggest that rather than using pure water, use antifreeze. Then you don't have to worry too much about draining it when it's cold outside.



Circulate the antifreeze through a saltwater/ice slush using multiple passes with copper pipe (basically, build your own heat exchanger). By using saltwater ice, you can achieve a lower temperature.



Ryan

 

[BHanna]

With the A/C system, you won't be able to get colder than about 35 degrees and I'm not sure if you could even maintain that on a 110 degree day. I bet you'd be doing well if you could keep your water at 60 degrees. The salt/icewater tank should be able to get you to a little below 30 degrees but salt is corrosive so I'm not sure it's worth a few degrees over plain ice & water.

 

[rscurtis]

We shouldn't be having this discussion. That truck is a good candidate for restoration!

 

[Morphious]

The truck isn't going to get restored, it's going to be a mud truck, I bought pieces to put a truck together, the only thing I have off that truck is the cab and doors, the rest of it is going towards another restoration that the guy I bought it off of is doing. The rest of the parts I bought are all severely damaged and will need quite a bit of sheet metal replaced to put it together. I bought the parts primarily for templates on building the rest of the truck. The floor of the cab is mostly gone, I'll be building a floor for it to fit the cummins and drive train. I bought all the body parts for 600. 00



the ice box is what I'd planned on initially with a cooling loop for glycol, but since I have all of the components of the ac system, i thought it would be a shame to waste it and wanted to see if anyone had attempted something like that before. I'll keep searching the internet to see if I can find someone that has done this and what their results were.



As a side note, I have a 46 civilian truck that I will be building for my oldest son and putting on a 4x4 s-10 blazer frame and running gear.

 

[Morphious]

just to update, here is a link to a system that I've found so far that is doing this tech.





Z06Vette.com - Corvette Z06 Forum - Cool runnings: Ford's SuperCooler uses cold air to heat up engine perf. (cool idea)



Morph.

 

[Skydiver]

Morphius, It may save you some time to know if the BTU's you are wanting to remove will over whelm the capacity of the AC system. How many horses will you lose turning the compressor?

 

[Morphious]

Here is another w/a intercooler with AC chilling:



Raw IC



I think i'm going to give it a shot and see what happens. I would shut the AC compressor off during a run, so the HP loss wouldn't be more than the normal drag on the compressor spinning freely. The idea is to use the Compressor the chill the water down before a run while not cycling the water to the intercooler, when I line up at the start, flip off the ac compressor and flip on the water pump to cycle the chilled water through the intercooler. At this time I'd also flip off the electric fans for the radiator if they were running.



Morph

 

[brods]

Interesting idea. Thanks for posting the links.



Those gasoline powered cars are running lower boost pressures which means less heat to remove so they may not be good examples of what your truck will need. Also note that the vehicle in the second link has an extra "heat exchanger" of some sort to take some of the heat out of the water before it goes to the evaporator. That leads one to believe the AC was not doing enough cooling by itself.



Here is a link to a diesel IC article you may find interesting: Intercoolers for Diesels @ ExplorOz



Notice in the chart where the air temp leaving the turbo on that hard working diesel quickly jumps over 300 F (150 C) in less than 10 seconds. That is well above the temperatures on the gassers.





As Skydiver said it would be a good idea to estimate the amount of heat you need to remove and to find out the capacity of the AC system you plan to use. At least you'll know if it is possible to do what you want in the amount of time you have available between runs before spending a lot of time and money on the project.

 

[JUeckert]

morphious, if you have a truck salvage yard in your region, scout it [them ] out. in some apps, cummins used a self contained cooler on the engine itself. simply bolts to the top of the engine, and is supplied with water from the heater hoses. i have bought many buses and 2 ton trucks with cummins engines, only seen this setup twice, but they are out there. try the older flatnose bluebird buses.

 

[Morphious]

I'll have to look around for a truck salvage yard to see if I can find w/a cooler off an older cummins, don't really know of any around to be honest and the chances of them having one are slim at best. Here's what I'm looking at doing at the present:



w/a intercooler from frozenboost.com, this is the largest one they have and will fit the area I have to put an intercooler:

Water to Air Intercoolers





the water pump will be this unit from northern tools:



Flojet On-Demand Pump — 4. 9 GPM, 12 Volt, 3/4in. , Model# 04300143A | 12 Volt Pumps | Northern Tool + Equipment



I am trying to buy a 20 gallon aluminum fuel cell off of ebay for cheap, will see how that goes, but that would be my water/ice resivoir or where I put the evaporator for the AC system, or I'll just tig together a custom fabbed box if I can't get a cheap fuel cell, haven't decided one way or the other. From what I read on the lightning setup, it takes 2 minutes to chill the water using thier designed AC system for about 40 seconds of use. Granted, they aren't running as hot as our diesel on the intake air charge, but it would be better than running just ambient water through the system.



Just trying to think outside the box and come up with a unique solution to the problem at hand.



Morph.

 

[JUeckert]

looks to be a good idea to me. seems i remember seeing a similar setup on a truck in one of my dieselpower, or offroad mag's. good luck with whatever setup you go with.