How to bleed water-to-air intercooler? (1 Viewer)

[Peter P]

Looks great!

My regret on mine was that I did not place the pump low in the system. I think then I would not have had the priming issues I had when I first setup.

Make sure the lower barb is the flow inlet on your front intercooler radiator.

Also make sure the air/water intercooler doesn't have trapped air either.

After going for a drive, put your hand on the air inlet to the air/water intercooler vs air outlet. Should be a big difference. I found I could not even touch the inlet, but outlet was maybe 40C. You can also feel the sides of the air/water intercooler to make sure the water is cooling it fine.

If you can borrow a FLIR thermal camera, you can have a look at the setup that way and learn quite a bit. You could also use a couple temperature probes to measure air temp before and after the intercooler.

Once your egts are solid, you can turn up fuel a bit at the spill control valve. This makes a huge power increase, and will help your spool a lot too.

Cheers GTS. I'm confident it's all sussed now and there is little to no air in the system and yeah the cold side of the IC feels good after a hard run compared to the hot side for sure. Yep, lower barb on the rad is the inlet (think that just happened by chance TBH). That's a good idea re thermal camera. I think my mechanic has one. I've had thoughts of building a custom tube bumper someday which I could design to get maximum air flow to the IC rad. It also could be nice to space it out a couple of inches and put some 7 inch fans in behind.

Re spool, there are a lot of hills where I live and sometimes I need to drive up them from a standing start. What's frustrating is that I know the truck would sit happily in 3rd at 3000rpm or a bit less, but I can't get there because it won't make enough power at low rpms after the change from second. Probably a more modern, better matched turbo would sort it all out properly, but that's out of budget for now. I played with the fuel screw a bit up to just under + 1/4 turn and that helped some for sure. I've put a pause on the tuning stuff for now as the new turbo is only a couple of weeks away.

If things go well with the new turbo, maybe I'll do a bit of a write up in another thread about the whole project. The stage one turbos are supposed to be a bit quicker and more linear in building boost and better in the low rpms. I'm not really sure how shagged or not the current turbo is after 30 years of use. Anyhow, I'll feel a lot better about running more boost and fuel with the new one in soon

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

Cheers GTS. I'm confident it's all sussed now and there is little to no air in the system and yeah the cold side of the IC feels good after a hard run compared to the hot side for sure. Yep, lower barb on the rad is the inlet (think that just happened by chance TBH). That's a good idea re thermal camera. I think my mechanic has one. I've had thoughts of building a custom tube bumper someday which I could design to get maximum air flow to the IC rad. It also could be nice to space it out a couple of inches and put some 7 inch fans in behind.

Re spool, there are a lot of hills where I live and sometimes I need to drive up them from a standing start. What's frustrating is that I know the truck would sit happily in 3rd at 3000rpm or a bit less, but I can't get there because it won't make enough power at low rpms after the change from second. Probably a more modern, better matched turbo would sort it all out properly, but that's out of budget for now. I played with the fuel screw a bit up to just under + 1/4 turn and that helped some for sure. I've put a pause on the tuning stuff for now as the new turbo is only a couple of weeks away.

If things go well with the new turbo, maybe I'll do a bit of a write up in another thread about the whole project. The stage one turbos are supposed to be a bit quicker and more linear in building boost and better in the low rpms. I'm not really sure how shagged or not the current turbo is after 30 years of use. Anyhow, I'll feel a lot better about running more boost and fuel with the new one in soon

Right on, sounds good! I look forward to hearing about your turbo improvements. Are the changes on both turbine and compressor? Or just compressor?

 

[Peter P]

Right on, sounds good! I look forward to hearing about your turbo improvements. Are the changes on both turbine and compressor? Or just compressor?

Ok, I'll do my best to do a write up when the time comes

From what I gather, sounds like the supposed gains are mostly to do with the compressor. They're made of billet aluminium rather than cast steel, the fins are of a different design and are longer from base to tip. The compressor is also apparently a bit lighter so should in theory spool a bit faster. I think the diameter is the same. They claim 10-15% extra flow. I'm sure it won't match the performance of a TD04 or equivalent but it will be nice not to have any adapters involved. If it turns out to be a worthwhile upgrade AND proves to be reliable, I'll be very satisfied. Time will tell..

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

Ok, I'll do my best to do a write up when the time comes

From what I gather, sounds like the supposed gains are mostly to do with the compressor. They're made of billet aluminium rather than cast steel, the fins are of a different design and are longer from base to tip. The compressor is also apparently a bit lighter so should in theory spool a bit faster. I think the diameter is the same. They claim 10-15% extra flow. I'm sure it won't match the performance of a TD04 or equivalent but it will be nice not to have any adapters involved. If it turns out to be a worthwhile upgrade AND proves to be reliable, I'll be very satisfied. Time will tell..

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Very interesting; thanks for that. I look forward to your review of this.

 

[Dougal]

Not helpful but a fair comment

I went water to air due to space constraints and wanting to keep the A/C. I thought about a top mount ATA, but concluded it would require a fan to be worthwhile and there's definitely no space for that. Additionally I wanted the extra performance of the WTA. The pump business is a pain in the arse but I'll get there in the end so no regrets. I went with a cheaper aftermarket version of the Bosch pump and possibly the actual reason the system wasn't working was simply because the pump failed unrelated to any air in the system. I guess I'll never know. Anyway, a new genuine Bosch pump is on it's way from Australia.

The other reason for having a header tank in the system is expansion. You've got everything going to run from temps of ~0 to ~80C so volume changes can be a big problem.

I have a Subaru 12V air-water intercooler pump here I'll swap for a bottle of Jagermeister.

Ok, I'll do my best to do a write up when the time comes

From what I gather, sounds like the supposed gains are mostly to do with the compressor. They're made of billet aluminium rather than cast steel, the fins are of a different design and are longer from base to tip. The compressor is also apparently a bit lighter so should in theory spool a bit faster. I think the diameter is the same. They claim 10-15% extra flow. I'm sure it won't match the performance of a TD04 or equivalent but it will be nice not to have any adapters involved. If it turns out to be a worthwhile upgrade AND proves to be reliable, I'll be very satisfied. Time will tell..

View attachment 3338222

The big gains in turbo performance at your boost levels have been turbine side design, not compressor side design. If you're going to run 30psi or so then newer compressors become a bigger deal.