Intercooler/ cooling questions (Kinda long)

[Clay Pitkin]

Greetings:

I have some questions on cooling and intercoolers. Ok so I have a intercooler that I installed and works great, but I have some questions, so if you could help please do.
I run separate tanks, one for the engine, one for the intercooler. I have a cylinder head probe already installed.

1. Do you run a temp unit to measure the actual temp of the water in the tank(s), or do you just stick your hand in there and say yup its cool, warm, etc? I also know to install ice to cool it down, but do you hope to get it to an actual temp, or just as cold as possible?

2. Speaking of the intercooler, do you measure the air temp prior to entering the intercooler, and then also measure the air temp exiting the intercooler? Is that overkill?

If you do monitor this, is the data of value, or does it become to cumbersome?

TIA, I appreciate it.
Clay

 

[SPARKY]

Clay,,  You are answering your own questions  if you want to know how you got there ie  (IAT inlet air temp)   you have to know it all--maybe not all the time but to have repeatability  you have to know it all

[redhotracing]

Checking PSI and IAT before and after the intercooler will not only give you an idea of your
IC's efficiency in cooling but also on how much pressure drop occurs. We found fairly steady
~70* IAT's post IC with only a ~2 PSi drop on a cheapy frozenboost.com unit. That's a $150
piece making a 180* turn within the engine compartment. Not too shabby. Gave us permission
to crank up the boost a bit while maintaining the same ice/H20 mixture in our tank.

NOTE: This was done as dyno-only data; we don't have the fancy electronics or data system
to monitor all of this at the track, nor do I have time to look at IAT's while running the car. It
is a helpful tuning tool, but could definitely be overkill unless you have data acquisition.