Anybody using the intercooled Magnacharger having problems with temperatures and the intercooler not working properly? Curious,,,, is the Procharger intercooler better? (more effecient)?

 

There's less thermal resistances with air-air and the greatest advantage of air-air is simplicity/lack of parts/reliability. This is why OEMs who are concerned with reliability use this a lot for turbo systems.

Air-water actually has higher performance despite lower efficiency mainly due to the **volumetric** (not specific) heat capacity (over a thousand times higher than air alone if I recall correctly) of water. On supercharged cars, there's the added benefit of a smaller piping length and charge air cooler for given cooling requirements which reduces the parasitic losses for given airflow moved. This is why OEMs have to sacrifice some reliability for a better overall performance tradeoff by using water-air ICs for most but not all applications. Mag. and twin-screw blowers on V-motors sit right on top of the charge air cooler and in turn on top of the manifold. It's always heat transfer vs. pressure drop in a system evaluation which water-air systems have the benefit with at the cost of complexity, extra moving parts, and reliability. Even if the IC coolant warms due to proximity with the manifold (when mounted on the engine), the liquid has still huge capacity to absorb heat. Example, put a hand in a 20 deg. F freezer full of cold air and put a hand in a 55 deg. F water...you'll feel the warmer water pull more heat out.

There's a similar debate with electronic cooling where folks like to stick with fully passive single phase air-only cooling for sake of cost and reliability. But some high performance cooling solutions (such as hot running exotic PC gaming computers) end up needing a separate water circuit dumping heat out remotely via radiator which is similar to what we see in the air-water charge air cooling and analogous to the water circuit in an engine cooling system.

As for heat soaking in repeated runs, it happens to all F.I. intercooled setups. It is more pronounced in charge air cooling systems designed for mild street applications vs. severe duty sustained boosted operations. An air-air system with long piping lengths can actually store more heat (via heat capacity of the metal pipes) in repeated runs and show a larger difference between a cool and hot run.

Sometimes tuning that's near the edge on a cool run ends up having KR on repeated runs and KR kills output (unless there are good temperature, boost, and coolant temp. compensation provisions built in) as most are aware of. The Ford GT uses a water-air charge air cooling that I gather is properly sized for road racing duty.

 

I think the prochargers intercooler (air to air) is more effecient that the (water to air) on the mangacharger. Once the water gets hot the water is hot... with the air to air you can get the cooler air blowing over the intercooler to cool down the heat sinks.

 

As usual - this is a GREAT explanation Staged!

I would add that if heat soak is a problem, you could get and alcohol injection kit and reduce your Intake Air Temps by a good amount. Depending on your specific need, this may be at least worth looking in to.

 

I had a Vortech air-water IC'd system a while back and the water pump broke. Pump degradation and clogging of internal flow passages are maintenance worries.

Air-air is more efficient, but air-water is higher performance due to really high thermal capacity (density x specific heat capacity) of liquids. Remember to look in a hardcore PC gaming computer tower and see the separate water circuit that is non existent in lower performance PCs. That's why they're called "water towers" and referred to as an CPU overclocker's "wet dream."

Also compare the size of an air-air charge air cooler and the charge air cooler on a water-air system and for given airflow/hp range, why is the water-air cooler so much smaller??? If air-air efficiency story was so critical then why isn;t the air-air cooler smaller? It's simply because of the volumetric heat capacity story as mentioned earlier. And note in the heat transfer vs. pressure drop story, any added pressure drop is going to enact a bigger tax on cylinder pressure to drive the blower (which is why OEMs choose the simplicity of air-air for turbos but the low pressure drop benefits of air-water for mechanical SC in most cases).

Efficiency is not always meaning greater performance, although it rarely hurts if there are no other compromises to attain it. As an analogy, the Atkinson cycle used in the ICE side of hybrid cars has higher fuel conversion efficiency but is marred by lower performance/engine output compared to the near-Otto cycle on standard gas engines.

Edit: Performance and efficiency go hand in hand, but not when comparing apples to oranges. And that's the case when comparing Otto cycle vs. Atkinson cycle or air-water vs. air-air charge air coolers. Of course ATI's literature tries to compare things as if they're apples to apples.

 

So for street driving applications both air-air / water-air will work fine. I was just curious if the intercooled Maggie had any issues since the intercooler has been "added" and if any forum members had any input or opinions. Thank you "Staged" for the input!

 

Staged.. Awesome Posts.

Rud.. The Intercooler in the Maggie kit for the C5 is larger then the one that comes for the GTO. I haven't read any C5 Maggie owners having problems. Just don't use that POS tune that comes with the kit.

 

I had my IC mag installed by a supporting vendor here on the EASTCOAST and they had my IC plumbed in reverse

I fixed that SNAFU myself and the IC works just fine in street application. I have not tracked this car yet...

 

 

Water dissipates heat 25X faster then air. Scuba 101.
Thats why a 75deg day is great, but 75deg water temp will freeze your nards off.