LB (LongBoard?) has an aftermarket IC on his machine.

Dr. O tested the Alta V1 "DFIC". At least that is the unit that was tested in his report.

 

LB is 'very far down the line' in terms of his mods so I guess it would be appropriate for him to get an aftermarket IC then! Interesting logic nonetheless.

 

Gotcha, thanks! I do love my big bad DFIC under the hood

I have perused the good Dr's review and holy hell I'm not that technical! I also don't have access to a dyno that I can do 50 pulls on either for the cost of Free99. .... renting a dyno for how many hours it would take to test 3-5 intercoolers would be more cost than I would want to incur personally.

Anyway, I'm probably still going to do the road testing. Sounds like fun, the community can take the info for what it is. Some will slander me and my findings, some will find useful purpose in them.

 

This is Gold dude, and I'm in the same boat as you

 

As promised here is our data! Sorry if the formating is a little confusing.

Good to hear from Matt, we havne't heard from you lately. Must be all those MC2 articles!

First off, i know understand why there are lots of doubters out there. It could be because our dyno graph wasn't on our site. When we had an issues with our pictures on the server, this one got missed. On these test conditions, the OEM Intercooler was tested with the hood down as was the V2. The fan we use is not some super over powering fan( that would blow too much air), but one we feel does a good job providing a good middle ground for air flow.



This test was on our 04 shop car. It had stock ECU programming (obvious by the redline), 15% pulley, ALTA intake, ALTA header, ALTA 2.5" Catback exhaust. If we had a way to raise the redline a bit, then further gains will be seen. The IC we used here was one with the cast tanks, and 12/12fpi.

So when we gave Matt our IC’s to test, we gave him our normal Classic intercooler, and our V1 ALTA flow through. Its important to note a few things with the ALTA V1 flow through. The tanks were made using parts of our old IC and some sheetmetal. The core was our first prototype core that was a 12.5"L x 2.9"H x 8"D core using 12 fins per inch (very important to note) on both hot and cold sides. This was our first attempt at the core, and Matt was the first to get it and the first to use it!

Here is the data in rough form from Matt. There is tons more data, but his is enough for you all to see.

Intercooler_____ Average Peak Mass_____ Ave IC efficiency_____ Average Cells with Knock_____Pressure Delta_____ Average Peak HP
Stock _____________714.1_____________ 64.2%_________________7.3 _____________________12.7_____________ 166.4
ALTA TMIC_________708.1______________61.0%_____________ ___5.4_____________________15.3______________ 166.8
V1 ALTA ___________720.2_____________ 54.5%________________6.6_____________________ 9.8______________ 171.9
Flow Through



Going into this we knew that our classic IC made power on the dyno, and it did it buy cooler really well. The cooler charge temps allowed the ECU to increase timing a bit and added some power. We had many guys with temp probes in the IC give us feedback in lots of conditions. All showing great IC efficiency.

For SEMA of 2005, we came up with the Twurbo kit and wanted to make a bigger intercooler for it. The idea we came up with was what you see. And was something we made very public a few years back. Going into this new core, we knew it would cool worse, but be much less restrictive. But how much worse at cooling and how much power would be made from it being less restrictive. As we have explained before, when designing an IC (using a given space) intercoolers can become a trade off.

From this data we saw exactly what we expected. It cooled worse but was less restrictive. But it made more HP. Now lets go over the data.
The stock core is our base, and from there we will measure others.
1. The V1 flow through showed the highest Mass readings. Meaning it had the highest air flow, which in turn can means more HP. The classic showed less airflow, which could mean less HP than stock, but there are other variables that play into that, like temp.
2. The Classic IC showed the least amount of knock which makes sense as it has a good balance of cooling and flow. This is why it does make HP on the dyno.

After we got this data we went to our core manufacturer and had them plop the V1 flow-through core into the big special program they have. Actually we were surprised that the temps were almost exactly what we saw in real life.

Design Point: ALTA V1 core 12fpi/12fpi

________________Cold Side ______Hot Side

Fluid ________________Air _________Air

Flow Rate _________225 CFM _____25.72 lb/min

Temperature In______ 60.8F ______216.1F

Temperature Out _____160.5F_____ 149.6F

Pressure Drop _______2.4 "H2O____ .7 psid

Design Pressure _____50 psig ______50 psig

Flow Arrangement ______Cross Flow

Heat Rejection _______412.2Btu/min (7.4 kW)


There is other info we hold secret with the above data, but you get the point. With further tweaking of overall size, and fin type and count, we got and pretty good improvement in overall performance. BTW the effectiveness is not the same as efficiency as it take into consideration a lot more than just temp in and out and ambient. So with that said below is the data with the changes to the core. We lowered the ambient fin count, and added charge side fins. This allowed the ambient air to move through the core quicker and get rid of more heat. The added fins to the charge side means more surface area for the hot charge air to dissipate heat to the cold side of the car.

Design Point: ALTA V2 core 10fpi/14fpi

_____________________Cold Side ___Hot Side

Fluid__________________ Air ________Air

Flow Rate ___________250 CFM ______25.72 lb/min

Temperature In _______60.8F________ 216.1F

Temperature Out ______153.1F_______ 147.8F


Pressure Drop ________2.4 "H2O______ .8 psid

Design Pressure______ 50 psig_______ 50 psig

Flow Arrangement_______ Cross Flow

Heat Rejection _______423.7 Btu/min (7.4 kW)


With our initial findings of the flow though IC making power by being less restrictive and not cooling better, we went with option 2. Things to note on the second option is the CFM. The CFM through the ambient part of the core went up on the V2 core, which is why the Btu/min went up. The more heat it gets rid of the cooler the charge! And we felt that .1psi more pressure drop was perfectly expectable since this will not effect power quite as much as a cooler charge temp is.

So on the dyno, what did we see? The same basic power gains as we had above. At least not definitive enough to make a new graph. But with slightly cooler charge temps and no change in pressure (again not enough to really say we saw a .1psi change) we were happy! Again, this is with our dyno fan which doesn’t flow like it could when you get above 60MPH.

With that said we feel very confident in our power we got, we feel like we have represented our IC truthfully from day one. The simple truth is it works! Now we haven’t tested it back to back on our GP, or with a GP intercooler, but we will soon. On that note, our Classic IC is also going through some revisions and as that progresses we will fill you on on that!

 

Jeff, thanks for the in depth post, says a lot about alta IMO, and is exactly the type of info i was hoping to hear from you guys

and intense, i'm looking forward to hearing your observations from testing the different IC's, as street driving is where i spend the most time in my mini

 

Thanks for taking the time to read it!

There was some other good info in my last post, but it got missed because of all the non-IC comparo posts between them. I do hope people read what we wrote. It should really help answer some questions.

 

Way to step up Jeff .

Longboard

 

LB changed his intercooler not because of temps but to increase flow. As I said before they (stock VS Big) keep the temps about the same. The stock has a little better recovery. The new big guy flows almost double the air of stock. The best is a front mount but I'm not willing to part with my AC.

Longboard

 

Jeff -

I JUST bought the Top Mount Intercooler (Classic) and installed it about a week ago. Now if I read the information correctly, I should be expecting .4 hp average increase and considerably higher pressure drop than stock? This seems to conflict with the dynos you posted directly above.

Am I reading this correctly?

 

Agreed.

 

The classic does have more pressure drop (because of the restrictive nature of it) but it cools much better. Where it really wins is in the temp department. Because the ECU is very aggresive at changing timing based on air temp, it gains pretty good power from this. Our really old results, were 8WHP and Randy WEbb tested it a long time ago also and found 10WHP on the dyno. So while some of the data on the Classic may seem not so good, it actually is in other ways.

For instance, a guy in AZ should get the classic as it will provide more constent power. But a guy who lives in Alaska, get the V2 as the cold temps make up for its worse cooling. Or if you are really looking for the best of both worlds get the V2 with a water methanol setup. Then you get both cooling and ZERO restriction.

 

Info looks awesome Jeff!

Just to keep everyone up to speed, the testing probes software and things I need are in the mail! Peter sent them to me yesterday.

I might have access to a Alta flow thru and top mount from some people in our local club. I'm going to see what I can get my hands on.

 

That would be awesome.

 

m7 good alta no good and stock sucks hahaha

 

I don't know about the dynos but I did collected the data for him on the GTT IC. He sent me - temp probes, reader and a pressure gauge and I installed and ran around taking measurements. I did various high way runs at varying speed and rpms, and did some quarter mile runs.

 

I live in WA...any chance of getting an exchange?

 

26 posts since November 2006....how come I have a feeling all 26 of those posts have been in the same rude and unhelpful to the overall discussion manner of the topic. Shame on you for even being a member of our community.

 

Well, maybe........ I might have something for you, give Ken a call.

 

So you're saying that the stock and Big ICs keep the temps about the same but the Big gets better flow. When you say big are your referring to the Alta v1 or v2? So with better 'flow' what kind of advantages are you seeing? Increase in hp?

 

I used a G-Tech performance meter, and a nice long freeway onramp near my house to do the testing. Real world airflow.....

One of the other things I found was that if I let the car idle for longer than about 30 seconds after I came to rest from my "conditioning" drive, I could see a roll off in peak HP number due to heat soak.

Besides having a way to measure the performance of the car, you need some sort of OBD-II data access so that you can make sure that a) the coolant is at proper temps, and that b) the IATs aren't too high (a signature of heat soak). With carefull car conditioning, I could get data that had a standard deviation of a bit less than 2%. If I let the car idle longer and heat soak issues came up, the standard deviation would expode, and it's impossible to really measure the differences in a meaningful way.

Matt

ps, and it gets messier as well. What works best depends on octane as well! What I really learned from all the testing is that the car is much more variable in day to day use than most mods add to performance; that testing parts well is a royal pain in the butt; and that ICs really shouldn't be the start of the mod list..... They should be wayyyy down the line of things to work on.

 

this thread is over... sad thing is... i'm pretty sure this isn't the first time Matt has had to post this.

 

It won't ne the last either

 

Careful Doc, standard deviations and repeatable data, you going to start a riot in here

Just to add an item for discussion.

I run the stock intercooler with a progressive meth system. Heat soak seems to be a much bigger enemy than most other variables. As you were saying, if the car sits for 30 seconds or so, a real short stop light, I can see see temps at 140-150 even at very light throttle settings. And, it takes a lot of airflow to bring them down again. A mad dash from that same stoplight, and it doesn't matter what IC you have, it takes a lot of clean air to bring it down.
I have the meth set to come on a little at low PSI, if I see the temps are high, all I have to do is tip in 1/4 throttle for a second and it drops the charge to 105-115.
Here's the interesting part, you might say, well you cooled the charge but didn't really help the intercooler. But the temps only go back up to 120 or so if I keep driving moderately. My theory is initially the meth helps cool the horn and intake manifold as well. I can run the car pretty hard, to the point of the IC almost burning my hand, The top of the horn is real warm, but the bottom is very cool to the touch. So there might be a little cooling going on form the air/runner-manifold interface at light throttle settings. When it's at high boost, the only thing that helps is constant meth. So far the meth at WOT seems to drop the charge about 30 degrees, from 150+ to about 115-125.
I just started using the OBD logger a couple of weeks ago, so I'm still learning a lot about what the car is really doing, but having access to the data is priceless.

 

What progressive water/meth system do you have?