Greetings.

Is anyone aware of any attempts to add small fans to the otherwise passive intercoolers in the MCS?

I am thinking of 4 to 6 of the small 40mm fans used in PCs and the like.
Units like this one are 1CM high and operate on 12V. Each provides around 5CFM of airflow.

I am pondering have a cluster of these fans sitting on top of the intercooler blowing cool(er) air downwards into and through my IC. Incidentally I have the aftermarket GRS model.

This would seem like a reasonable way to mitigate heat-soaking while setting in stop and go traffic, and might help airflow through the IC when moving by FORCING cooler air through the IC.

Has anyone tried something like this before?

Any thoughts or comments?

Regards

RC

 

It's been talked about - concensus in the past has been that at speed the fans would do more to restrict airflow than to promote it. And given that the need for airflow is greater at speed (assuming your foot's in it), anything impeding said airflow would be a bad idea.

 

been done in uk,
its a good application for hanging around drag stips waiting for runs...

 

are these PC fans waterproof?

 

Both concerns I would have. A good solution to combat the effects of heatsoak is water/meth injection... and/or spray a cooling agent (like CO2, some do nitrous ) on the IC...

 

#1

 

Yea, I think the general idea of fans on the IC has more flaws then benefits. For one, you need to power the fans which strains the alt witch draws power from the motor which creates more heat. Nothing is free here.
I do know that a strong fan on an IC can add up to 20hp on a dyno, so fact is that air though the IC is a good thing. But as others mention here, it's not such a good thing on the street.
Also, don't cool a top mount IC with CO2. It get's into the intake and kills your power.

 

A banned NAM member by the handle of "Nitrominis" used a fan rigged up somehow in the rear of the engine bay to exhaust hot air away from the CAI and the intake side of the engine. It used no added vents in the hood or any such. As I understood the setup, his idea was not so much to cool the IC directly, but more to keep it from getting so hot in the first place by exhausting hot air and thus, keeping the engine bay cooler.

Alta's IC Diverter with sprayer is a cheap (compared to meth injection) means of quenching the IC in traffic or other conditions that strain it.

 

I get the principle here... but I'm not clear on HOW the CO2 ends up in your intake if you're running a sealed system like the 1st gen JCW intake, that draws all it's air from outside the engine bay... If you had an HAI or an open top ALTA, DDM, etc. I get it...

 

Be sure to not confuse cooling of the airstream through the IC (to cool the IC) with cooling of the airstream inside the IC (which is the actual intake air.) Water sprayers, dry ice, whatever can be used for the former, but only meth/water systems are applicable to the latter task.

 

Heat soak Is not such and issue when you dont have a huge turd of an intercooler. the stock one is hard to heatsoak.
besides who needs power in traffic. i often find my self wishing the motor could run at a slower RPM

 

I've seen one car with a home made fan setup. The car came from Hawaii and he said it helped.

 

I just dont see how this helps.... it looks as if there is hardly any room if any, above the fan.. and i dont think its going to suck air through the scoop and down over the IC. It just looks like it would reduce air flow

 

You are hilarious.

 

I'm going to bolt this bad boy to the front bumper and just hammer air into the scoop .

 

Air flows through IC's by pressure differential. You could put many fans on top of the IC and they may not generate enough pressure in front of it to get enough flow through it to make a difference.

Sitting in traffic in the heat temps as high as 200F can be seen in the intake manifold. My suggestion is a IC sprayer that can be manually triggered. You'd be surprised how fast temps drop in the intake manifold by just putting some cold water on the IC while the car is sitting completely still. Once you start moving again the effect is even greater.

 

Is that the 50cc or 80cc model? Or did Jan get a hold of the crank and stroke it?

 

you could build a custom hood scoop with the fans built in and directed towards the intercooler...if you could find a way to have them vented and not block airflow through the scoop it might work well...the only downside would be a big scoop

 

just remove the bonnet. and stretch a mesh screen over the entire engine bay....how has nobody thought of this!...

 

The IC is just like your radiator. If you look at what kind of CFM and power it takes to run one of those fans, you can see what you are dealing with. If the fans are not right on top of the IC, such as radiator fans are right on the radiator or have a shroud, you will not generate enough differential across the core to really do anything. By all means give it a shot, but I think you'll find it's more difficult than it seems.

The old guard had a long thread about this years ago, and the end result was that to get a fan big enough to do the job, it would greatly impede flow at speed, and it would be near impossible to fit between the hood and IC due to the size of the electric motor(power) to drive the fan well enough. Maybe new fan designs have come out, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I'm not trying to stifle creativity, just lend some perspective from what's been discussed here in the past.

 

Thanks for all the collective wisdom.

I appreciate all the perspectives. I talked it over with the Legendary Steve of Steve's Auto Clinic in north hills [San fernando valley]. LS says "don't bother."

He cited the same concerns any fan big enough to do anything would not fit anywhere useful, and any fan big enough to be useful would probaby block most of the air flow we'd want to use.

The consensus seems to be that a simple mister arrangement for the IC yields the best results for the least money. I'll probably go that route.

The HEAT question still remains, though:
- Is there a practical way to draw more heat out of the engine compartment? Auxiliary electric fans perhaps?

My Dinan CAI [ similar to JCW CAI] is actually really, really hot when I pop the hood. It supposedly pulls from the closed comparment behind the airbox, fed from the driver's side hood vent. I suspect its proximity to all the hot engine bits means I have a Warm Air Intake. Would a small blower or fan here increase draw into the compartment and thus the CAI?

Any half-vast solutions to these vast problems spring to mind?

thanks,

rc

 

You mean Like this?

 

I have a temp probe in my JCW airbox, and it is usually only a few degrees above ambient when moving.

 

lol, no offence, but apparently you dont know a super lot about computers... www.newegg.com will be your favorite web-site and id suggest a 120 mm fan at least, and if you can handel the depth, a scythe like this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835185054
would work just awesome
i use that fan on the back of my case ( i built my comp)
and even though its loud, most normal high-speed high performance fans only pust ~80cfm of air a min, but that one does over 130 cfm
if something smaller is needed, newegg probably has it, and you can search for almost anything by any parameters if you hit the power search button in the left hand colum once you go to the case fans section (top bar, computer hardware -> fans and heatsinks -> case fans -> power search.
also, im snot sure anyone here could get their hands on it, but id be interested to seee what a fine mist in a very short burst of liquid nitrogen to an intercooler would do. will cool a computer chip that air cooled with the best air cooling and heatsingks on the market would run well over 160 degrees f to -180 degrees..., but thats a continuous bathing.
has anyone hear heard of liquid nitrogen beiung used before?

 

howe hit it here.... how hot the outside of the Dinan or JCW or Voltage, etc box gets isn't such an issue - the question is how efficiently heat is transferred from the outside walls of the box to the inside while air is being continuously drawn through... the plastic/composite/fiberglass materials transfer heat much less efficiently... which means that the air inside the box is cooling the inner surface faster than heat can transfer from the outer surface. So yes, a black box under the hood feel hot when you put your hand on it. But that doesn't mean it's making the air hot, as long as your air is being drawn through the cowl as it should be (and with the Dinan, as long as the weatherstrip is done right, it mostly is.