Converting my wrx intercooler to a/w.

[boostjunkie]

Anyone have experience with converting an a/a intercooler to a/w? Just wondering how involved it would be to make a casing for my wrx intercooler.

[ciper]

I have, though it wasnt my own intercooler. I helped someone when I owned a Supra. We took it to a shop that was able to weld aluminum and gave them a rough drawing of where we wanted the water outlets and there size.
It was ready 2 days later and didnt look half bad either. They offered to have the unit dipped in some chemical to clean it but cost was the concern. If I remember right it cost 120-150$?

Now that I have practice welding other metals Im going to try and make one myself out of a mx6 intercooler.

[vrg3]

The ideal way, from what I've read, to convert an air/air core to air/water is supposedly to run water through the passages that intake air used to go through, and run air through the core where ambient air used to go. It might be hard to do that with a WRX top mount and make it fit. There are probably better-sized cores out there to go with. Older Audi turbo intercoolers come to mind.

[boostjunkie]

It was ready 2 days later and didnt look half bad either. They offered to have the unit dipped in some chemical to clean it but cost was the concern. If I remember right it cost 120-150$?.

Really? That's all? I might have to look into this. What's the shop's name?

vrg3, I would like to go with another intercooler setup, but this one is already paid for, and it fits pretty darn well

[vrg3]

That's cool, boostjunkie... I was just offering what I'd read. I don't know for sure what the reasoning is behind inverting the flow that way. It probably just has to do with the fact that it helps make sure the water conducts heat with all the core's fins and that it flows air much more easily. But you could probably get good results without inverting the flow if you did it right.

Are you sure the WRX intercooler will fit well with a water jacket around it?

[boostjunkie]

How much of a jacket would I need? There's a significant amount of room around it. Just comparing it to the jdm RS a/w intercooler, it's a little smaller.

[vrg3]

I dunno how much you'd need... The challenge I think would be making sure you get water to go past all the rows of fins. That might require a weirdly shaped jacket.

We need a hydrodynamics engineer to join this discussion.

If it's smaller than the stock air/water unit then that sounds promising.

[ciper]

I dont remember the shop name, it was 5 years ago I think. They didnt specialize in car stuff though, just a metal shop that made all sorts of crazy stuff.

[evolutionmovement]

Does anyone know what the inside of a Subaru AWIC looks like? From a bad accident, perhaps?

Steve

[vrg3]

This diagram should give you the basic idea:

http://www.legacycentral.org/library/rod/ic/2.htm