intercooler on non turbo car

[Graham]

following on from the damp rags thread, would an intercooler be any use on a non forced induction car?


say a chimaera? and how big would the intercooler need to be to make any difference ?

g

[900T-R]

Nope - it would only pose a restriction to the intake air.

The purpose of an intercooler is to take out as much of the heat created by compressing the intake air. However, an air/air intercooler can -never- cool the air to lower than ambient temp.

And provided your engine is not sucking air from beneath the exhaust manifold, ambient temp is what you have on a normally aspirated car in the first place...

However, highly tuned naturally aspirated engines could benefit from water injection as a means to lower combustion chamber temps and avoid detonation.

[heliox]

as a matter of interest, where about's does the water injection happen?

h

[annodomini2]

inlet manifold

[900T-R]

Depends whether the water injection is mainly used for charge air cooling (forced induction engines) in which case the outlet end of the intercooler would be the most suitable place to inject water, or for detonation control in the combustion chambers (which is the -only- task it can perform in naturally aspirated engines). Then indeed the intake runners would be where I'd put multiple injection nozzles, or the plenum in case of using only one.