Boxster intercooler???....
 

Hi,

Anybody mounted an intercooler on their Super or turbocharged Boxster ? If so, where and what kind? Does it require remaping your AIC or ECU. Also if your using a piggy back device, what kind?

Thanx, PK

PK,

Yes, Gary in BR's twin turbo install has an intercooler on the bottom of the motor where the aluminum stress plate originally resided. He has pictures here (or on sixspeed?) that show it pretty well.

The TTP installation puts the IC in the rear trunk, here's a pic:
http://www.t-t-p.de/pics/porsche_kits/engine_986_2.5.700x462.jpg

Eric

Huh, Thats interesting, I thought about the trunk but couldn’t figure where any meaningful amount off fresh air would come from. Also, am I only seeing one pipe off that IC? ??

I’ll have to try to fin Gary’s pic.

Thanx, PK

mmmm, 390hp 3.2L twin tuuuuurbo...

*drooool*

Has anyone done a TTP turbo kit? Curious what the reliability is like.

-David

Do you mean TPC?

PK

No, I'm pretty sure he meant TTP. TPC is another company that makes a S/C for the boxster. Turbowerx offers a twin turbo setup that mounts the intercooler underneath the car as shown in the pic. Seems to me it would work alot better than in the trunk. I don't see how TTP can reliably crank out 390 hp out of the 3.2L unless they are lowering the compression and going to forged internals...and I don't think they are.

Here are a few pictures of my intercooler install.

Oops, forgot to point out that Gary's install is an air-air intercooler and the TTP is an air-water system, so no air goes through the trunk, just water lines.

The TTP 3.4 twin turbo does replace internals, but I don't think the 3.2 does...

http://www.t-t-p.de/english/986.php

Hi Gary, Glad you showed up :)

-Is there a scoop of some sort that scoops air through that intercooler? If not, how does it have a cooling effect so close to the warm trans.

-I saw one of those pumps somewhere but not clear on what it does?

-Does the length of those tubes to the intercooler rob you of some charge flow? Or is that just “tuned in” or compensated for systemically.

Thanks,

PK

It seems like water/air would is a nice solution, but I don’t get what TTP has going on in what would be the trunk. It appears to be the heat exchanger…but with only one tube??

Ideas?

Thanx PK

Ya, I have a TCP, and If he was referring to one, I could talk to it. I Googled “TTP turbo”, it’s apparently the name of some ghastly rap-something group. Google’s first page was dedicated to them, saw enough…

Don’t quite get how the air goes through the fins the Turbowerx set up.

Thanks, PK

That's a lot of money
 

15,500 Euro seems like a lot of money. Seems like you could spend you money more effectively either doing other things.

Par-tay! :)

Air-water ICs are good for packaging but have some limitations for a street/road race engine. Each heat exchanger in a system is at best about 75% efficient (i.e., it can remove about 75% of the temperature difference between the internal flow and the external ambient temp). For example, if the outside temperature is 80f flowing across the intercooler, and the charge inside the IC comes in at 180f, a 75% efficiency would produce a temp drop of (180-80)*75 = 75 degrees, so outlet temp would be 180-75 = 105f.

Now when you stack heat exchangers, as you must in a air-water system (there's an air-water exchanger in the front of the car to cool the water, then a water-air exchanger on the engine to cool the compressed air) the efficiencies multiply, so 0.75*0.75 = 56% system efficiency. (And this is a contrived "best case" example, 75% is rarely attainable in the real world.)

On the other hand, an air-water exchanger can be used with a cool-tank to get the water well below ambient temp (just toss a block of dry ice in the tank) and for short duration events like drag racing this can be a very significant advantage. (You can do the same sort of thing with an air-air cooler by spraying nitrous across it instead of just leaving it out in the air; the expansion of the nitrous from liquid phase to gaseous phase nets a huge temperature drop.)

The pump in Gary's car is the oil scavenger for the turbos. Turbochargers drain their cooling/lubricating oil out the bottom using gravity, there's no pump system inherent in the turbo to get rid of it. On most installs, the turbo is well above the oil pan, so the drain hose just drops back into the pan r the side of the block or whatever, but when packaging forces the turbo down low, you must suck the oil out of the turbo and pump it back into the engine. Here you see the turbo drain lines emptying into a little aluminum plemum, and the pump then evacuates the plenum back into the engine.

Eric

-Is there a scoop of some sort that scoops air through that intercooler? If not, how does it have a cooling effect so close to the warm trans.


There are no scoops on the intercooler, I agree it makes sense to put scoops on it but Turbowerks did significant testing and did not see as need for the scoops.




-I saw one of those pumps somewhere but not clear on what it does?



The pump is the for the oil as Eric mentions. (thanks eric you explained it allot better than I could have.)



-Does the length of those tubes to the intercooler rob you of some charge flow? Or is that just “tuned in” or compensated for systemically.


I am not 100% sure but I do know the system is producing 6lb of boost at the throttle body. So I would assume that if there is a pressure loss the turbos are producing enough to ensure the boost at the engine is correct.


Thanks,

Thanks for the reply Eric,

Your W/A IC’s synopsis backs up what I’ve heard elseware. I get it, you’ve 2 “losy” heat exchangers instead of one. Couldn’t you though, just double up the size of the front water exchanger space permitting ? Also, Is the wet heat exchanger just a radiator?

As to the cool-tank set up, isn’t really practical for my purposes.
Thanks for clearing up the pump mystery, who da thunk .

So what do you think about the positioning of Gary’s IC?. Obviously works for his setup, but I heard of something called “throttle volume” meaning (I guess) the volume of air in between the SC and the throttle body. Apparently to much and you get something akin to turbo lag. I was told that a total of 4 feet of tubing (to the IC and back) “probably“ wouldn’t be noticeable…your thoughts?

Last but not least, any clearing houses that you know of for calculating a workable system be it W/C or A/A. I have this goal of milking another 25 hp out of this thing and I’m on the cheap at the moment. Right now can only semi educated guesses as to how components I cob together might behave.

Thanks again, PK

P.S. Is water injection a valid option (no clue about it)

--------------------------------------------

Hello Gary,

I realize yours is quite a different animal than mine and I’m sure it’s designed with holistic approach, nothing extraneous. But yours is the only model I have to go by with respect to the IC.

Do you know the approximate size of you IC? Inlet and outlet diameters (or hose diameter would be good enough

Thanks a ton, PK

P,S. I asume your setup has a pigigy back AIC of some sort, do you know what it is?

I'll get under there and measure the inlet and outlet today. And the 3 dimensions of the IC

The Turbowerx web address is http://www.turbowerx.com/ There he has pictures of intercoolers and pipes.

My ECU has been reprogrammed. No add on software or piggy back. I am actully expecting a new ecu any day now. (need a little more power)

If your looking for more power JAAY was investigating adding methonal injection to his supercharger setup. This is the company he referred me too: http://www.snowperformance.net/

Also there is the idea of spraying the intercooler with nitrous. From my understanding spraying the intercooler with nitrous lowers the intake temperature even more. I am afraid of the research on the nitrous spray of the IC because if it sounds promising then I will figure a way of mounting a spray onto my IC.

A quick google search
http://www.fastwrx.com/nterinchil.html
http://www.watson************************************************************************************************/servlet/Categories?category=NOS%3ATurbos%2FSuperchargers%3 AIntercooler+Spray+Bar+Kit


I hope any or some of this helps, and I will post the measurements sometime today.

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Hey Gary,

Thanks, no need to be super precise, ballpark is fine. The more I learn about IC’s the more complicated it gets, should be a no-brainer. I do think you do indeed need more power with a new ecu. :)

I’ve thought a bit about methanol/water injection & nitrous (great coolant), but I think I’m more inclined towards solutions that are seamless and permanent. Mixing up my own 93-95 oct. brew out of pump and race fuel is enough for me I think.

Thanks again, PK

Yes, increasing the transit time in the cooler can improve its efficiency somewhat, but there are ceilings on the improvement, so I'm guessing you'd need a really huge water-air one to get it significantly cooler...

You know, I used to think it was a problem, always rationalizing that increased volume between the turbo and the throttle was detrimental to throttle response, but in practice it doesn't seem to be a problem. My turbo cars have always had pretty small volumes, due to the IC being close to the turbo and intake, but I've ridden in cars with long pipes and they are plenty snappy, even right off the line as they're building boost...

Try the calculator I wrote years ago for this stuff. The list of maps it supports is way out of date, but the numbers are good.
http://www.not2fast.com/turbo/glossary/turbo_calc.shtml

It's certainly a valid option (and probably a good one given our high compression motors), but it's another system you have to design, fab, plumb and maintain. The hardest part is finding decent injectors if you want fine (i.e., proportional) control of the water injection, but a simple system can be quite effective using just a fixed nozzle. One of the big problems with water injection that most people don't acknowledge is internal corrosion of the engine; a "typical" WI system can add a lot of water to the oil, which can cause problems and there's not much discussion of this anywhere that I've ever seen, but it's something you need to keep in mind.

Here are my WI notes, more theoretical than practical, but maybe useful...

http://www.not2fast.com/thermo/water_injection/

Eric

Oops, forgot to answer one question:

One of the water-air heat exchangers (the one on the front of the car) is indeed just a radiator. You could repurpose the center radiator on an S (or install one on a base) to use as the "condenser" on a W-A system... (The other water-air exchanger, the one back in the intake tract, is usually one specifically designed for that purpose, look for Spearco intercoolers, they have good pictures and some docs (I think they got bought by somebody, I had them fabricate a big IC for one of my quattros a few years ago, the link I have is dead now).

Eric