Does anyone know how the Alta, GRS and new M7 air-to-air intercoolers compare with regard to thermal efficiency and pressure drop?

 

Maybe this will lure "Andy" back to NAM..... he was all over this kind of thing... I will say this..... I have the Alta and there is so little space for air to flow it is more like a heat sink than a flow through IC...... I looked at the M7 site and did not see the IC.... I think it is vertically oriented and that real flow through is happening...... a front mount would be great but they are very expensive..... if you are going to do it I would suggest you look at the new vertical offerings that hopefully will be here soon

 

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=64445

 

WOW!!! as we say in audio "that LOOKS like it sounds good"

without seeing the numbers I have to believe this is the new standard....... who wants to buy my Alta?

 

We'll see won't we?

Should be a fun ride.

 

I'm hearing significantly more than 80 percent efficiency has been seen, and I'm guessing that pressure drop won't be nearly as high as a front mount, so...

 

talking about intercoolers. Pete at Mymini is working with forge to creat a new "updated version of the forge motorsports ic. he is adding on another row of fins in the back and lower in the front more to compensate. the IC will sit at more of a slant, make for much better air flow. i cant wait to see the outcome.

 

Actually a Front mounted IC wouldn't have much pressure drop at all if there was enough room to put one in the car like there is on other Turbo cars. Everyone thinks that the bigger IC's have more pressure drop when in fact they don't. (to a point)

Think of it like a cross section of air flow (charged air flow). Using a stock location Mini IC, there isn't much room to go up and back to make it bigger. So the cross section of charge air flow is very small/restrictive. Our current larger core has a larger cross section than the stock part, and the new ALTA SIDE DRAFT IC is much bigger.

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=56802

This is one of the reasons why it performed so well in the HP department. Shown from tests done by Dr. Obnoxs.

With that said, if we could throw a:


or:


on the Mini, you would see less pressure drop and of course much better cooling efficiency. Why don't we just throw one of these on? You wouldn't have functioning head lights for one thing

The side draft IC that we started working on a couple of months before SEMA, was made specifically for testing what better charge flow will have compared to cooling. From tests done by Matt (Dr, Obnoxs) it has shown that there are great benifits to the better flow than better cooling.

With the Twincharge kits out there, which actually run cooler charge temps compared to an over spun SC, this side draft IC will work very very well. We could make it even bigger, but to a point the deeper it gets the worse the cooling, and cooling is still important.

Maybe if people were willing to loose their headlights, we could adapt one of our WRX intercoolers to the car! (a picture from this weekends LV meet)

 

to test the current GTT and Forge. M7 will send a DFIC for me to test later (the only one was at AMVIV). I don't know if I can get my hands on a GRS to test though...

Numbers will come.....

Matt

 

That might actually be a very cool IC..... if it was actually hooked up .;.;

 

It wasn't supposed to be hooked up, its a Photoshop rendition using one of our Subaru intercoolers. But it sure looks mean! Man, I hope the new mini has more room for a front mount intercooler!

 

Does this car have an factory A/C condenser mounted?

 

According to ALTA2, it's a rendering in Photoshop (See post #11). So the answer to your question would be: it does if you want it to...

 

You posted before I could take back my stupidness. I read that it was a photochop, but for some reason it didn't register. Must have been taken away by the thought of that IC actually being usable.

 

Larry,
Regarding the numbers to compare IC's. You are more than welcome to the Data that Dr. Obnoxs got from our NEW SIDE DRAFT IC. Just give me your EMail and i will be more than happy to give you the full report.

We have nothing to hide with the results. We were very surprised that the Side draft IC we built long ago worked so well. Which is why we are going ahead with building them.

In fact, Larry or anyone else that has the abilty to test with temp probes and BIMCOM, you are more than welcome to test the Original ALTA Side Draft IC.

Sorry about the photoshop confusion, it was only meant to be fun!

 

Nothing to be stupid about, the picture and the post it was in was quite misleading as it says .." (a picture from this weekends LV meet)". Not sure that if I hadn't mentioned it that "photoshop" would have come up.

 

You're probably right Greg. I've been staring under the bonnet of my car a lot lately and I know that the IC pictured would never fit.

 

Unless you are willing to break down the front end of one of your Minis and just about completely redesign it, a front mount will be almost impossible to do. There is actually very little flow through in the front of our cars. For sure the AC would have to go along with the radiator shroud to make it work well.

You should come up when we start to reassemble my car and you'll get a good feel for just what's up there.

Looks like M7 has it going in the right direction.

 

Don't forget about the ALTA Side draft, it was the original flow through design.

 

M7 does have it going, but at $900 for the DFIC, I can't do it right now.
I'm thinking about milling up some spacers to go between the SC inlet and tube and between the intake and IC outlet "horn" to move the IC over to line it up with the scoop.

 

I doubt that will change anything. The IC as it set now is fully exposed to air flow. Just because it is off center does not mean it is getting less air flowing through it. Moving it to the center may possibly make a microscopic difference in flow which will almost certainly be offset by the additional volume you are introducing into the induction path.

Think about it. If you just made a smaller scoop so the IC was in the center yet slightly off center to the centerline of the hood you would achieve the same thing.

There is a maximum amount of CFM that can flow through the IC. As long as that criteria is met then you've done all you can. You will almost always be under that limit.
I've never seen what that flow is. Has anyone?
From there one of the resident wiz kids could tell us the ideal speed needed to achieve this.