hello, im very new to this forum thing and i was wondering if you can use a intercooler as a cold air induction. my car is a 85 ss with original 305. ive had this intercooler for my silverado for years and just wan to use it as a induction.

 

im actually doing this to my 02 ls, ive heard of a few people doing it. i was thinking about just buying the piping kit but im going to rig something up with teh full intercooler kit as my intake.

 

It is a complete waste of time and money. Lets think about this for a second- your air inlet (or filter) is located in an area where it can only suck cold air- either the fenderwell or the front air dam area. So the air coming in should be ambient temperature.

Now, if you run this air directly through an air-air intercooler (which is what I assume you have)- your air inside is virtually ambient temperature, and the air passing through the intercooler is actually ambient- so you have no heat transfer at all. In this case, all you're doing is adding useless weight.

The way an air-air intercooler works on a turbo setup is the turbo sucks the air in from a cool source- and drastically heats it up- so you've got 200+ degree air inside the intercooler and piping and ambient temperature on the outside- so obviously the air inside loses some heat to the air passing by the intercooler.

That is why it won't work

However, if you had an air-water intercooler, you could theoretically cool the air a bit- if you used ice water, or some other very cold source- but the bad thing is with that- you have a lot of weight (ice box, pump, hoses, air/water IC box, etc)- and the closer the two temperatures are, the less cooling effect you have. So if you have 40* water in the IC and 70* air passing through, you are going to get very very little temperature drop.


Now, if your current setup (I'm assuming you have a carb with a round filter on top) sucks air for right over top the engine- then you need to get a filter box that has regular piping outlets, so you can run tubing to a cold air area (fenderwell or the front of the vehicle)- no need for an IC, just some tubing to get your inlet temperatures down.

lol, please don't waste your money

 

I agree with bumpin I think the air temp wouldn't change and if anything it might raise the temp if anything.

 

Didn't think about that- you're adding more piping length, more bends- making for more pumping losses- not to mention all that extra metal piping to get heat soaked.

 

Exactly thats why I think it might raise the temp if anything

 

i get what youre saying but we know a couple people who swear by this that it works better than a regular CAI.
were wanting to at least give it a try(this guys one of my buddys by the way,the one who sold me the downpipe)on his car anyway, his dad insists that its going to work(his dads one of the people who has tryed this)hes got all this intercooler hardware so we're going to give it a try(on his car first). if it dosent work it doesnt work. itll be one more expierience to learn from, im not trying to argue by any means. ill let you guys know what happens with his 85, but if youre saying its not a good idea, im just gonna let him do it LOL.

 

ok this is what i am going to ask and no one really asked this befor putting in ther opinion. no ofence to any one here. is your freind thinking on doing more mods later and wants to get the inter cooler set up and installed befor he gets more bolt on. performance parts like a turbo or a supercharger? if so let him get it install it all he would have to get is the super charger or a turbo. if he has nos he can route a line to the inter cooler and a fan set up that conects to it to make a little differencebut not much.if he is going to get it just to get it and do nothin it wont do any thing but strain a little do to warm air from the radiator warming up. the inter cooler will become warm do to it. just wanted to ask and let you have a heads up

 

there are some here that have a inter cooler set up but they have superchargers and a turbo system set up in there 3.8 models. i wanted to ask if your friend is going to get a super charger or a turbo later on down the road after he puts on the inter cooler?

 

If he swears by it so much, then ask him to explain the math behind it. If you suck in 70* ambient air through the intercooler- and it is 70* outside- where is your heat transfer? Seems pretty simple to me- if you have virtually the same temperature inside and outside of the intercooler, then there is no heat transfer- have them explain how it works if they're so sure.

Ask your friend what his current intake air temperature is (new engines have a sensor for this that you can easily scan)- and what he is shooting for? Also for them to claim this works- have them take before/after intake air temperature readings- just saying it 'feels more powerful' is BS.

IMO you're talking a ton of time trimming, cutting, fitting and such just to install this- why waste half a day installing one only to end up with no gains. An intercooler doesn't just drop in.

There is a reason NO NA drag cars run an intercooler (or any NA race cars period).

First of all- that won't work with most positive displacement superchargers- it is VERY rare for a positive displacement supercharger's lower intake manifold to be setup with regular intake piping connections- they generally bolt straight to the intake manifold, meaning there is no way to run an air to air intercooler (that is why the L67 guys run water to air intercoolers with a simple heat exchanger like a heater core mounted beneath the blower).

For a CSC or turbo, I guess I could see it- but why waste your time- you're still going to have to do 50% of the work later to hook it up (then hope your other tubing doesn't get in the way). Rather than strap an extra 50 pounds of useless crap on the car- you're better off waiting until you put everything on.

If he has nitrous- inject it into the engine instead of doing some ricer spray.

Sure you could do a CO2 setup to cool the intercooler- but you get back to the original problem- the closer your temperature inside and outside the intercooler- the less heat transfer occurs. With an NA setup and a good intake routing, your intake temperatures should be almost ambient- how much are you going to be able to cool them off with a cooled IC? Even if you can manage to get the intake air temperatures to drop 15-20*, you've added an easy 50 pounds of intercooler, piping, your CO2 or N2O bottle (can be 20+ pounds alone), all the tubing for that, etc etc.