I know people cool down the intercooler with some sort of sprayer for more cooling and maximizing performance. Instead of spraying the intercooler, is it safe to spray the Turbo instead? I was thinking of setting up an Intercooler Sprayer but It would be much easier to just do the turbo. Will it be effective? and Will it be safe to do so?

 

Turbos are oil cooled, once you turn off the engine the pump keeps running for couple of minutes to cool down turbocharger.

Water is too inefficient and would require a lot of it to cool the turbocharger down. Think about constantly refilling the fish tank full of water and spraying on the surface of the turbo to lower it by couple of degree.


If you want to cool your turbo quick, maybe a better type of oil or turbo timer like most JDM cars with turbo kit.

 

Thanks for the advice.
I'm more talking about the performance perspective.
People spray water to their intercoolers to add even more cooling to the air coming in. I was thinking if you can spray water or anything at the turbo to improve performance with less heat.

 

I hope you mean cooling down the compressing air charge either entering or exiting the turbo's compressor wheel hosing ? And not the actual turbo unit itself!

 

I don't think anyone currently here is doing an external spray to the IC. Spraying the turbo directly I would be concerned about how the metal would react to the new hot/cold cycles you would be introducing. Most metals don't like going hot/cold/hot/cold.

What some of us have done is install water methanol injection (WMI) to the intake pipe. Do a search for Aquamist to find out more. Aquamist systems have been used to spray the internals of the turbo/supercharger on other cars.

Cliff notes version: Decent performance increase even with out tune, much cooler engine, plus helps prevent carbon buildup.

 

The turbo charger on the MINI IS water cooled, that's why there was a recall recently on some of them, to replace the secondary water pump that runs after the engine shuts off to........cool the turbo. The part that is cooled is the center section, where the bearings run, not the entire housing.

If you're talking about spraying the intake charge, there are kits availavble to do that too, Aquamist makes one - it's about $1000.

Edit: Taz just beat me to it!

 

Come on guys, he's talking about spraying water ON the inter cooler to increase the heat transfer coefficient, by evaporative cooling.

Spraying on the compressor side of the turbo won't be very effective because it has much less surface area.

 

For me, spraying water on the turbo spells bad news. Water will spay onto the turbine side (whether you want it to or not), which is far hotter than the compressor side, and doesn't take kindly to rapid reductions in temperature. It could end up leading to cracking of the cast iron turbine housing, and eventual turbo failure.