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Originally Posted by de_dust
great information kyle and xan... nobody questions the fact that water is a greater cooling efficiency than air... however the concern is it would be nice to have more information on how the stillen kit is design to provide and maintain this cooling efficiency.... how big is ur radiator, are you installing a fan with it, location, etc etc... so if u can provide that, it would be nice... also can you think of the possible reason why nissan never used water cooling... perhaps the GTR could have used it....
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I will gather this information and post it soon. What I can confirm right now without having exact dimensions is that the bar and plate heat exchanger that we use on this supercharger system has more surface area than the old tube and fin heat exchangers that we use on the Titan and 350Z kits...Which is actually the same heat exchanger that Magnusson uses on their Corvette supercharger systems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fstrnldr
Kyle you conveniently left out the fact that a good portion of those examples have no choice but to run air/water. Almost anything w/ a roots or twin screw style blower is going to be more than slightly difficult to make work w/ an air/air system. There are probably far more examples of factory forced induction cars operating w/ air/air rather than air/water.
That being said the biggest question i would have isn't what is better between air/water and air/air. I personally think they both have their places depending on the intended outcome of the build. The question would be is the system in question large enough to keep the temps under control for the vehicle/blower combination. The only way to prove or disprove this is w/ extended driving monitoring in and out air temps. Not 7 min of dyno runs on a "HOT" 72° day.
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You are correct and I should have written a bit more in that post clarifying that there is no need to be concerned about reliability. The primary thing I was trying to point out is that it is reliable enough for some of the largest manufacturer's out there.
You bring up a good point about the need for air to water intercooling in those applications. Another thing I left out of my last post is that one of the primary reasons companies like Bugatti, Ford, or GM choose air to water intercooling over air to air is airflow...Not just the air traveling through the intercooler or directly in front/around it. What else can that air be doing? Take a look at just about every car that comes from the factory with an air to air intercooler and look at the placement of that intercooler. It is almost never a front mount. GT R intercoolers are on the side. 300ZX intercoolers are side mounted, Toyota Supra intercoolers are side mounted, Subaru WRX intercoolers are top mounted. Why is this?
Because the engineers at those manufacturer's understand that fresh airflow to all of the vehicle's coolers is extremely important. The goal is always to get fresh airflow to each cooler. By mounting a large front mount intercooler directly in front of all of the other coolers means that the second or in some cases third and fourth row of coolers are not seeing fresh air. By the time those coolers see outside air it has already been heated by the intercooler, oil cooler, auto trans cooler, power steering cooler, a/c condenser...you see where I'm going with this.
I am trying hard to convince our engineer's to let me take apart the black car again. Just to take off the fascia so that we can take a picture to show you what I'm talking about. Fortunately, and unfortunately, our engineer's are more concerned with testing and putting miles on the car than they are about marketing.
You also bring up a great point about "The only way to prove or disprove this is w/ extended driving monitoring in and out air temps. Not 7 min of dyno runs on a "HOT" 72° day."
We have done this...Our 5AT G37 coupe was tested at El Toro air force base for high speed runs, heat soak testing (0-140 MPH run after 10 minute heat soak to check heat exchangers ability to dissipate heat from coolant), drifting/abusive testing (tight radius, low speed high RPM turns which keeps airflow low but heat high.) and much much more...
Also, Steve Millen has taken our 6MT red 370Z to Las Vegas, Nevada and back. Then he took it to Virginia City and back with a stop off in Mammoth in freezing temperatures to check the performance of the intercooler and supercharger system in cold climates. Steve stayed the night in Mammoth after a snow storm, let the car sit overnight and fired it back up in the morning. On this trip the car went through high elevation, and cold weather testing.
I personally have also driven the red Z on numerous occasions, sometimes even to local car shows like the Cerritos meet.
Yesterday our head mechanic took our customer's 7AT black 370Z to Baker and back...accidentally missing the 91 freeway entrance and going to Temecula instead...another 350 mile round trip.
We have thousands of miles of testing completed so far. We have the kits driving around the streets on three vehicle's with three different transmission setups so we can make sure that the kit works perfectly on each.