Custom Intercooler (1 Viewer)

[Greg McNally]

Hey all,

Just getting into a little project for my 1HD-FT; and I thought this crowd might be interested. I've designed the intercooler which will be in fabrication this week plus I've sourced components to install an intercooler between the turbo and the stock cross over intake pipe on the 1HD-FT w/ EGR. I'm aware most people just remove the EGR's but, I'm trying to within reason keep it as stock as possible. This is going to be a small W2A intercooler; I'm curious to see how much of a gain I will actually net. Main reason for this is when it's really hot out the performance decrease is noticeable & annoying. So if all this gains is consistency I'll be happy, but obviously I am hoping for a bit of a boost.

Main Components:

Custom Intercooler using a small core from bell intercoolers.
Bosch style electric water pump w/ 19mm lines.
Radiator from a Yamaha ATV with 700cc engine.

Plan:
Remove everything from in between the turbo and the intake crossover pipe including the intake preheater screen. I might source an inline dc coolant heater so that circuit still works as the ECU intends; still not decided on this. Then, I'm hoping my EURO spec truck has the wiring installed for the CDS fan and I can repurpose most of that wiring for powering the Electric water pump with an OEM look and style. This is yet to be confirmed as my truck is in the shop awaiting new injectors; 4 of 6 were heavily over fueling.

As for testing I'm not planning on doing much. There's a long steady hill on a 80kmh[50mph] hill that I'll go up in 4th and keep the speed & throttle the same for the hill and record air temp, boost, EGT temp and compare to afterwards.

See attached photos.

 

[TheBussman]

Nice job getting everything cut out and planned. The pump will work well and probably the radiator (not sure how big it is) it might be the angle of the picture but the core looks pretty small. Bell intercoolers will calculate what HP it will be able to flow, remember to tell them to calculate for diesel and not gas as diesel needs more air. just make sure your not going to choke the engine. I can't see any advantage using the coolant heater vs the glow screen.

 

[Greg McNally]

The pump will work well and probably the radiator (not sure how big it is) it might be the angle of the picture but the core looks pretty small. Bell intercoolers will calculate what HP it will be able to flow, remember to tell them to calculate for diesel and not gas as diesel needs more air. just make sure your not going to choke the engine. I can't see any advantage using the coolant heater vs the glow screen.

The core is small. It's got about 4.5 x the area thru the core than the turbo outlet. Better than but similar to the preheat screen which will be removed, so it shouldn't choke the engine. This was the largest core bell intercooler makes that I could squish in there without modifying the stock cross over pipe or removing all together. I can test this out for a couple weeks prior to winter storage. I won't be into this cooler for big dollars; I do a lot of work with this fab shop and they know it's a pet project so pricing will be fair. If unhappy with results I plan on purchasing a replacement crossover pipe and seeing how I can better the design without removing egr equipment.

For now I'm very likely just to remove the glow screen and associated bits. Just want to fully think it thru before committing.

 

[TheBussman]

I don't really know but I think there might be more to it then just the area, about half of the area of an intercooler core is solid unlike a glow screen. Bell will do the math for free. I get what your going for keeping it stock. If it doesn't work out you may consider a low dose water meth system. You can leave everything stock, hide the nozzle were you can't see it. Just run washer fluid and use like a 1.5gph nozzle or similar and set it come on about 3psi higher then the boost pressure you have at cursing speed. It will drop your intake temps tremendously may even go below ambient temp for a short time. It will also clean up all the EGR gunk (would want to start out with a clean manifold and crossover pipe) Somebody may chime in and say that water meth will blow up your engine and it defiantly can but not if you use it in small amounts like I'm suggesting.

 

[Greg McNally]

Update progress photos.

 

[kevin in okinawa]

LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR RESULTS!

 

[TheBussman]

looks good, if that's a 3" pipe it should flow well enough.

 

[Greg McNally]

Yup; 3" pipe! I'm going to do a pressure test to 125% of the radiator cap pressure rating tomorrow. To confirm no leaks.

I was thinking more about the testing. I'm going to get a cheap 4 channel temperature data logger. With it I'll measure the following: ambient air, air post turbo, air post intercooler, and coolant post cooler. That way I can get a lot of data quickly and see if I'm getting any heat soak as well. Details to follow.

 

[Greg McNally]

Excuse the Dog bed in my work truck. So... I filled the core and separately 1/2 the hose with water. Then I connected the hose to the intercooler & lifted the end of the hose with the air chuck. Once all the water had settled I used a bicycle pump to apply controlled pressure onto the intercooler. At first I was going to 15psi to bleed the air, and it looked like I had a leak.... but I've been cycling the pressure on the core throughout the day and it's getting better and better. Likely some air was in the system and needed to be cycled a few times. I spoke with Bell intercoolers to confirm pressure ratings so that I didn't destroy the core, and they informed me the core is good to 30-40psi so I went up to 150% of the Radiator cap [24 psi]. I've lost 2psi over 1 hr at 150% the Radiator cap pressure; with there being approx. 250ml of water in the core that amount of pressure drop is a TINY amount of water. If the pressure stays at 22-3psi for another few hours, I will consider that a pass.

 

[TheBussman]

That can work, I always submerge the whole thing in water and pressure test with regulated air, air seems to leak out more easily, less work and you can pinpoint a leak right away if there is one. Pretty much know right away if it's a pass or fail.

 

[Greg McNally]

Yeah, air works for sure, and you're right probably would have been easier & faster. I'm just defaulting to my work mindset pressure testing watermains...

 

[Greg McNally]

Update; I've been waiting for my new injectors to clear customs. They should arrive tomorrow. I'm planning on doing an experiment with a hairdryer today to test the intercooler prior to installation.

With any luck I will have the intercooler installed this week.

 

[Dougal]

Honestly that's too small and restrictive. You'll possibly lose more density in pressure drop than you will gain in cooling. You really want 3x the cross-section for your engine air-flow and longer flow paths for better cooling and thermal mass.

 

[Greg McNally]

So I did an experiment with a Hair dryer to simulate hot compressed air. My garage is a disaster.... please excuse.

Averages:
Ambient = 14.51 C
PreCooler = 74.84 C
PostCooler = 40.33 C
Coolant = 28.93 C

Roughly 60% cooler Efficiency; 11% density increase. Hoping to get this installed on the truck and get more temperature data, and add pressure data pre/post to confirm I'm not choking the engine.

 

[Dougal]

So I did an experiment with a Hair dryer to simulate hot compressed air. My garage is a disaster.... please excuse.
View attachment 3766174
Averages:
Ambient = 14.51 C
PreCooler = 74.84 C
PostCooler = 40.33 C
Coolant = 28.93 C
View attachment 3766170

Roughly 60% cooler Efficiency; 11% density increase. Hoping to get this installed on the truck and get more temperature data, and add pressure data pre/post to confirm I'm not choking the engine.

Keep in mind that's 60% heat removal at ~2kw heat input.
How much heat removal you need depends on boost levels. At stock boost there's not much. Double stock boost and your intercooler needs to extract 20-30kw of heat at 2000rpm full load.

 

[Greg McNally]

Keep in mind that's 60% heat removal at ~2kw heat input.
How much heat removal you need depends on boost levels. At stock boost there's not much. Double stock boost and your intercooler needs to extract 20-30kw of heat at 2000rpm full load.

Very true. I cant see myself going much above stock boost, and I have no plans of doing that now. Mainly, I'm hoping to learn something about intercoolers and get some drivability out of this project without removing emissions equipment.

My work truck like most NA trucks these days has 400hp and short towing gears... I don't need or expect the cruiser to be fast like my work truck, just adequately powered.

 

[bj70bc]

to make that core do a better job the water flow and the water cooler rad should be upsized to help dissipate the heat
if you stacked 3 of those cores it would be better

 

[bj70bc]

this style above do much better than this one below, in regards to air flow to the core direction (not referring to inlet/outlet orientation)

 

[Greg McNally]

This project is on hold. Truck is not healthy. Started smoking a lot late Sept, found 4 faulty injectors. Replaced them still smokey, did some more investigation and thought it might be the turbo. So we swapped in the wink turbo, smoke is progressively getting worse. Might be rebuild or replace time...

 

[Dougal]

This project is on hold. Truck is not healthy. Started smoking a lot late Sept, found 4 faulty injectors. Replaced them still smokey, did some more investigation and thought it might be the turbo. So we swapped in the wink turbo, smoke is progressively getting worse. Might be rebuild or replace time...

Compression test time.