Jezebel's AWIC - Now With Pics!

[vanbcguy]

Yep, mine is all 2" as well.  Everything I read said bigger does not always equal better with that!

[zagarus]

Going to be a fun little project, I have the same thing in my car and i'm always looking for ways to tweak it. I still have yet to install a resevoir and am thinking of getting a buddy to weld me an aluminum one that will fit up in the rain tray.  Get a few litres out of it or so.   We'll have to get together sometime once I move down to vancouver this month.

[vanbcguy]

Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that you are lazy, I was saying that *I am* and that's why I would install an EGT gauge.    That's also the reason I do oil changes, etc, etc...

I actually have intake air temp gauges before and after my air-to-air intercooler (actually used extra senders and a switch for my oil and water temp gauges  )and can say firsthand that they only come up over 100° F if I am into the boost for an extended period of time, e.g. climbing a hill.  I can't imagine being able to effectively use an IR thermometer while driving.  

Yep, no offense taken either way.  It'll come, it just isn't there yet.

Plan with the IR thermometer was more to measure the difference on the intake pipes after a hard hill climb.  We've got a few particularly good hills in this city which can be worth about 40 seconds of continuous near-full throttle or full throttle climbing.  It'll just be an interesting data point...

Princess Auto often have cheap temp gauges, but when I was there the other day there wasn't much.  I did have one on my shopping list but nothing "did it for me"... What I was thinking about though is measuring the water side of my system... The rad I got has a temp sender bung in the lower tank.

I would have thought that the normal automotive-type temp senders would be too slow to react to effectively show air temperature? Kind of like how everyone goes for the Aircraft Spruce EGT probe because it reads waaay faster than the VDO ones or whatever.  How quickly do you see the post-turbo temperature climb once you are on boost?

This page has a handy calculator:

http://www.not2fast.com/turbo/glossary/turbo_calc.shtml

At 15 PSI with a turbo that's 75% efficient you'd be seeing about a 90°C temperature increase coming out of the turbo, but that would be true as soon as you hit 15 PSI, just as a function of compressing the air.

Just wondering because I'd think the fluid-type senders wouldn't get enough heat transfer from just air to really react until you'd been on boost for a couple of minutes...

[vanbcguy]

Going to be a fun little project, I have the same thing in my car and i'm always looking for ways to tweak it. I still have yet to install a resevoir and am thinking of getting a buddy to weld me an aluminum one that will fit up in the rain tray.  Get a few litres out of it or so.   We'll have to get together sometime once I move down to vancouver this month.

Yeah, I was reading your build actually, it's part of what got me to actually go out there and DO it already!!  So you're running with a closed system right now?  Definitely would be in to see what you have in person.

[vanbcguy]

It's installed!!!

The rad was a squeeze - engine rad is still mounted to the factory lower mounts but the top had to be moved back about an inch or so.  Thankfully there was plenty of room in the engine bay.  NO way the fan that shipped with the kit was fitting in there...  I also had to trim off the tabs on the drain cock for the rad as it conflicted with the lower bumper.



Ended up making some brackets and attaching the IC to the transmission and to the cylinder head - I could probably use one more brace but it seems like it's going to be good enough.  Piping got about 14-16" shorter by the time I fit everything in.  I am not sure if I will just leave that hump hose on the back as is or if I'll try and find an angled coupler, we will see.



The pump is mounted to the front frame rail and tucked in there quite nicely.  There's no real way I could get a picture of it but it's in there.  I have a switch on the dash so I can shut it off if I need to, like say if I develop a water leak or something.

Engine is NOTICEABLY quieter which is something I hadn't really thought about but I'm quite pleased!! I had a lot of intake noise before, this really quietens things up. 

The car definitely feels different.  #1 is a weird vibration I had around 2K RPM is totally gone.  Why? No idea.  I'm happy though.  She definitely has more get up and go too, though I haven't touched fueling at all.  I won't be making any fueling changes any time soon, the goal was just to cool the engine down.

I haven't measured it yet but there is a significant difference in the temperature of the intake pipes pre and post IC after a hard romp or two. 

[vanbcguy]

Did some good drives yesterday and put about 200km on everything.  No leaks!

Yesterday ambient air temperature was about 25°C, my IC rad was reading about 34°C and the water exiting the IC was about the same (this was stopped of course), after some city driving.  Like I said I don't have a fan on the IC rad so that would have been getting a bit heat soaked for sure.  The back end of the IC registered about 36°C, and I was picking up about 58°C from the pre-IC pipes.  This was NOT after any sustained boost or anything, just driving in some stop and go traffic.

Later on I did a highway run - I didn't take any temperature readings but the outlet side of the IC actually felt COLD which is awesome.  One thing I'm noticing though is it seems my post-IC piping is picking up a LOT of heat from the turbo below.  After not moving for just a few minutes that pipe goes from cool to quite warm.  I think I need to fit it with an insulating jacket.  Still it is nowhere near the temperature of the pre-IC piping.

The other thing I want to find a solution for is with my reservoir - since it is so small there is quite a lot of turbulence in there, which stirs air in to the water.  The air then gets sucked in to the system which I really don't want.  I think I might be able to figure out some fittings to change the direction a bit and hopefully keep the outlet below the level of the water. 

I MIGHT be better off flipping the IC around as it does collect a little air in the back end right now as it is slightly higher than the front.  It's close enough to level that you can just shove it down in the back a bit and the air all comes out, but once the hood is closed it needs to be on that angle.  I wanted to run it this way as it puts the coldest water in contact with the coldest air, which I was thinking would yield the best overall temperature reduction but if the thing is getting air pockets that probably eliminates any advantage.  I think I'll try sorting out the reservoir first and then flip the IC if that doesn't work.

Surprisingly I'm noticing additional power when in first gear.  That wasn't what I was expecting!! I'm still at the same boost/fueling levels so I wasn't anticipating much of a performance difference at all.

Want a really good incentive to get an EGT gauge?  Install one of these and then not let yourself tweak anything...

[R.O.R-2.0]

you want the cool water to work hardest. make it enter at the hottest point in the cooler..

[vanbcguy]

With appropriately designed systems, counter flow (coldest against coldest, hottest against hottest) is most effective.  The physics reason is because the temperature differential is what drives heat flow.  While it is true that if you have the coldest water exchanging with the hottest air, then exchange at that part of the cooler is greatest, it is not the big picture.  After the exchange of heat at the start of the cooler, the water and air will be very similar in temp and from that point on the remaining surface area of the cooler will become less and less effective at removing heat as the two temperatures become close to normalizing.  If, on the other hand, you use counter flow, then the water will always be cooler than the air and will result in flow of heat from the air into the water throughout the length of the cooler.  With effective counter flow, you can reduce the temp well below the median and in some cases the temp can get close to the water inlet temp.  The more effective heat removal of counter flow can be seen in many applications, the most fun IMO being counter flow wort chillers.

Yeah, it is set up counter flow currently.  It seemed to make the most sense to me in my head. 

I added a 90° elbow to the inside of the reservoir which has stopped the water rolling up against the opposite side and mixing in air.  It seems to have been quite effective, I'm not getting air trapped in the IC anymore.  I went out and blasted another 80km or so this afternoon - it's fairly hot today (for Vancouver), nearly 25°C.  I REALLY notice a difference at highway speeds - Jezebel is a ROCKET!  Again, fueling / boost levels unchanged so this is purely from the additional cold air. 

I also noticed at highway speed I'm running a bit cooler too in terms of engine temps.   

Right now I want to get as many km on it as possible before Thursday as I'm driving up to Kelowna again.  If anything is going to go wrong I'd like to find it NOW rather than later.

Oh yeah, someone asked earlier about the price... For all the aluminum pipe, pump, clamps, water lines, intercooler and heat exchanger the bill was about $675.  There was another $50 or so in bits and pieces (mostly stuff for the reservoir, and then some steel to make a bracket for the IC).  The install did not require cutting or modifying anything on the car - I can completely remove it and have the car back to stock in a few hours.  (well I did drill a hole in the dash for the pump on/off switch, but other than that!) 

[vanbcguy]

My IC radiator has been consistently about 10°C above ambient in all the measurements I've taken thus far.  If I take temperature samples from my intake pipes right after stopping the car, the pipe exiting the IC is consistently within about 2-5°C of the reading I get off the rad itself.  The only way I can take samples though is to pull over and pop the hood so I am not able to really get any peak readings since generally I can't accelerate at WOT through the gears and then immediately take a reading given all I have is an IR thermometer to measure the rad and a meat thermometer in the reservoir. I haven't ever seen my water temperatures above about 38°C, and that was with ambient air temperatures of about 28°C and the rad itself measuring about the same.

Pre-IC piping has generally been coming back around 60°C but it's pretty much impossible for me to get a temperature reading while it is at it's peak temperature.  The best I've managed is after about 3 minutes of driving post-WOT so I know the peaks are quite a bit higher.  Based on my turbo's efficiency I am expecting that my peak pre-IC temperatures are +90°C at 15 PSI, probably a bit over 100°C at typical summer ambient temperatures.

The best temperature differential I've been able to measure with the equipment I have therefore is about 28°C exiting the IC (with about 15°C ambient air temperature) and 60°C entering the IC, a reduction of 32°C.  I believe the actual operational temperature drop on a hard pull is likely significantly more, but I have no way of quantifying it at this time other than to say that I don't seem to be retaining much heat in the water system beyond what it is exposed to with the rad mounted so close to the factory engine radiator.  My reservoir, which is on the exit side of the IC, generally has been reading the same as the rad indicating the system is shedding heat pretty well. 

More gauges needed!!

I have about 400-500 km on the system now.  The only problem I've had of any note was my LDA line blowing off due to the crappy vinyl tubing I used to extend it getting too hot and soft. 

I had read a number of other AWIC users having the threaded NPT fittings leak on them, the best solution I'd seen was to use pipe joint compound (the pasty stuff) rather than teflon tape, so that's what I did on my build.  No leaks!!  I had one at install time that was just a clamp that wasn't tightened enough, but that's it.  No drop in water levels.

Tomorrow I'll be driving up to Kelowna, will see how my install does on a 4-5 hr continuous trip, although I did put about 4 hours straight on it yesterday.

Very happy!

[theman53]

There a hole in that thing big enough to shove some ice cubes from the cooler into???

[vanbcguy]

There a hole in that thing big enough to shove some ice cubes from the cooler into???

Yeah, but not more than a handful. Some dry ice would be fun to try but I don't think it'd last very long.  The goal with the build though was really towing and mountain highway driving, as in several hours of sustained driving.  If I wanted to get fancy I could put a way larger reservoir in but I don't think I'd gain much for what I want to do with the car.

I think the next thing to do would be to cut some sheet metal around my air filter to prevent it from pulling in engine bay air.

[vanbcguy]

Just got back from Kelowna!

I drove the Crow's Nest out there via Penticton, then came back via Penticton / Osoyoos.  Total drive was about 900-1000 km with lots of WOT hill climbs, tight turns and all kinds of fun.

No leaks, no blown off boost pipes, no loss of water.  Very happy about all of that...

I gotta say Jezebel is a different car with the AWIC.  I really used to notice a lack of power in the upper ranges on a lot of the climbs.  I can't say I had even one time on this trip where I felt like I was maxed out which is definitely a first.  The reduction in intake noise was a joy too, it's amazing how much quieter the car is.  I would definitely call this install a complete success!

AWIC coolant temps were generally just below 26°C every time I came off the highway.  Outside ambient temperatures ranged from 18°C to 25°C so it appears everything is working well.  I'm obviously not getting any noticeable heat soak on the water side of the system when I'm actually driving on the highway rather than in the city.

I have absolutely no choice but to get an EGT gauge now.  There is no way I'm going to be able to keep myself from messing with my boost/fueling for very long.  I THINK the Auburn gauges might just fit right in the dash below the heat controls on my Mk III - will do some investigation on that soon.

Oh yeah, and I also need a better boost controller.  My bleeder type controller has been doing great for the last 3 years but 15 PSI is basically the limit of what it can do.  Again see "need EGT gauge"...

The only NEGATIVE I've got... the reduced intake noise has let me hear some noise which I think is either my front wheel bearings or the diff side of the transmission.  Will probably start with the wheel bearings and go from there.

[myvolkswagen]

Kind of off topic but what did you use to wire the car for a trailer? I was gonna do the same thing to tow my motorbike behind my car

[R.O.R-2.0]

any trailer wiring converter will work.. but you need the wiring converter box for imports.. american made vehicles use 1 bulb with 2 filaments for brake, constant, and turn..

imports usually use 2 bulbs (one for brake and constant, and one for the turn signals..

so you get that little converter box, splice it into your light wiring, and you are good to go..

[ORCoaster]

Don't you just hate improvements that start cascading into other unknown or not noticed before problems.  I found the installation of some foam in the roof prior to a headliner kit install to do the same thing.  Now that I have switched my IP pressure around, re-timed the engine and can barely hear it running I too am noticing my running gear or transmission up front growling like a small bear.  Oh well best to start figuring it out now before something wears away.  Or the bearings fail like the rears.

Don't need that problem again.