air water conversion creativity

[teaguespeed]

while i was smoking some crack last night (just joking), i began to wonder if it would be possible to actually turn an air-air intercooler into an air-water intercooler, by maybe welding plates onto the top and bottom to enclose the core. then simply somehow run water through where the outside air would normally go. seems like a air water intercooler with a core the size of a decent size air-air intercooler would have really good cooling efficiency. have i finally gone nuts? what do you think?
thanks, Teague

[vrg3]

A lot of air-water intercoolers are converted air-air units, but not how you describe.

What they do is run water through the inlet and outlet pipes, and let the air blow through the fins of the core. The entire assembly has to be enclosed in a sealed housing. This way you can have a lot less flow restriction for the air, and the larger flow restriction for the water just means more heat exchange.

[ciper]

Hmm, reversed.

I would think the internals of the intercooler that air normally passes through would be more optimized for high speed flow no?

[-K-]

My brother has an Air-Water IC made by welding a tank around a 88 Ford Turbocoupe IC. He hasn't installed it yet (on his T-bird) but it has been done before and worked great.

[vrg3]

ciper - Well, there are two kind of conflicting goals in air-air intercooler design: 1) to not make a big restriction in air flow, and 2) to ensure efficient heat transfer.

The air-water design can lean more towards #1, since the heat transfer is made extremely efficient by using water rather than air and by pumping it rather than relying on external ram air flow.

K - Did he reverse the flow as I described, or did he just run water over it as Teague described?

[-K-]

No, but the T-bird IC flows ok. The nice thing is that it will bolt right in. That is for his street car, his racer is getting a Superduty IC then a air-water (maybe two), with ice water of course. He is running a HX-35 turbo that came off a diesel pickup! The inlet is three inches across! (He is also nuts) That is an interesting idea about the core switch, I'm gonna do some research on that. Where did you find that info?