efficency of an intercooler.?

[andrew e]

i have just installed 2 remote thermocouples, one before and one after my intercooler, and hooked them up to a dual input dick smith hand held temperature thingy. The difference between input and output is a constant 25 degrees. Max it gets is 55 deg post intercooler, with egts peaking at 420. Are this readings good, average or poor?

Oh, and the cars a 3.9 isuzu powered 110 with a rb20 turbo and toyota water to air intercooler.

Andy

[Tapage]

Nice reading about turbos ... highly recomended

http://www.are.com.au/feat/techtalk/intecoolersMR.htm

[tweak'e]

http://www.are.com.au/Inter/air_to_water.htm

a very good read.

what vechile did the intercooler come out of ?

[KiwiBacon]

The more heat you can get out, the better.
But it's very easy to get the first few degrees out and very difficult to get the last few degrees out.

55 deg post intercooler is fine, but what was your max temp before the intercooler?
If it was 100 deg or higher (say 12psi upwards) then that's great. But if it was only 70 deg then it's not so flash.

Calculation for intercooler effectiveness
E = (Tair_in - Tair_out)/(Tair_in -Tambient)

Efficiency as a word doesn't apply to intercoolers as they're only moving heat, no changing energy from one form to another.

[changaz]

that is good, on my old turbo exa i had a temp sensor on the intake and it was nothing out of the ordinary to see temps in excess of 90degrees on a hot day. after fitting an intercooler it fixed the problem and temps were much like yours.

[KiwiBacon]

My IHI with a rooted compressor wheel (eroded blades) was running over 150 deg C at 15psi.

T25 did 15psi at only 120 deg C, strangely backpressure wasn't any lower, but fuel economy improved over the IHI.