Which is worse?

[THAWA]

The stock turbo to throttle body tube

or

An AWIC with no coolant in it

Discuss.

[-K-]

Well...... I ran my AWIC with water and no pump for a week or two when my first pump died. No issues but I turned down the boost to 12ish PSI.

Long term I wouldn't run the AWIC dry.

[scottzg]

I'm gonna choose awic. It will just heat up and transfer heat, just like it's designed to.

[THAWA]

choose awic as worse or better? Why wouldn't you run it without coolant?

[Warp3]

That reminds me of an article on AutoSpeed where they were noting that one of the primary methods that an intercooler works is acting as a temporary heat-sink under boost, then releasing the heat back into the intake under lower loads. The theory was that if the heat-sink was effective enough (the specific example was using state-change cooling), external venting wouldn't be required as the intake air would recool the IC sufficiently between bursts of boost on a street driven turbo car.

Of course, that means more than -K-'s example should be passable (water but no circulation) moreso than the empty AWIC tank condition that THAWA mentioned. Still...I would think that the tank itself would at least have somewhat of a heatsink effect (which unfortunately means it takes heat from the engine bay moreso than the stock tube would as well).

[professor]

the dry AWIC will soak up heat for about 1 second before it gets hot, so I'm voting for it to be worse, based upon the air restriction without significant cooling payoff