Denco -water To Air Intercooler

[toyota mick]

Iv Heard Many Different Stories About Water To Air Intercoolers -but For The Price -do They Work?

Im Ready To Install An Intercooler To My 1994 Hilux -ct20 Turbo & Mod Injector Pump -custom Exhaust...

Will The Water To Air Set Up Increase Power For Towing & Offroad ?

Will I Be Able To Juice Up The Pressure {psi} On My Turbo...?


I Guess If Its Keeping Exhaust Temperatures Down -that Not A Bad Thing..

Has Anyone Installed One?

Are You Happy?



Toyota Mick

[Peter @ Aawen4x4]

Yes, they DO work!

Yes, they WILL increase power for towing and off road.

Yes, you WILL be able to juice up the psi on your turbo (to a certain extent and also to a certain extent at the expense of the EGT gains you made thru fitting the intercooler! - So be moderate!)

Yes, it's a great thing that they keep the EGT down (amongst other things) but if you wind the fuel up too much you can loose that gain thru the search for more power!

Yes, I've installed one, altho I don't have a vehicle with one fitted atm! Denco did a GREAT Job in assembling the kit, easy enough to do, even better again once Cooma Diesel worked my rudimentary tuning over!!

No, I'm not happy, 'cos I don't have one fitted atm, I'm still working towards an installation of one on the current vehicles - it's on the cards tho!!

One of the frequently raised drawbacks is the potential for water in the engine if anything should leak, but I've gotta say that I've never even heard of it happening for real. Just heard it raised by suppliers of air to air intercoolers! The air to air jobbies work well too, but since I have a lot of gear requiring cooling up the front of the radiator, putting another heat exchanger there was never an option, and besides, I need the extra power most when I'm going slower, and that's where the Denco water/air intercoolers excel. A worthwhile investment in engine longevity and power IMHO.

Do get the engine tuning set up for the cooler charge tho, you can do it reasonably yourself, but specialist diesel tuning places can do it soooo much better!

Enjoy!

[dakar61]

"Yes, you WILL be able to juice up the psi on your turbo (to a certain extent and also to a certain extent at the expense of the EGT gains you made thru fitting the intercooler! - So be moderate!)"

Tell me Peter, why would the installation of an intercooler cause EGT gains?

In my experience the opposite is true.

[Peter @ Aawen4x4]

Sorry Dakar, obviously didn't write it clearly. It's not the intercooler that's gonna boost the EGT, you are absolutely correct in that it will bring that down, after all, that's what intercoolers are for! But given that you get those gains(improvements - lowering of overall EGT's), then many people see the gains and start cutting into those gains with even MORE fuelling (and psi) in their search for extra power such that they can end up worse off than they were in terms of EGT, even tho' they DO have a lot more power!

So the warning was that once you've made the improvements in EGT by installing the intercooler, you shouldn't erode the improvements too much with extra fuelling and psi - be moderate in the 'extra' that you put in so that you DO actually see improvements, not degradations! :)

[RoughLux]

These water to air systems rely on a seperate heat exchanger pump and an electric fan. Has anyone tried hooking into the vehilces cooling system? So there is no extra heat exhanger, pump and fan?

[Peter @ Aawen4x4]

Some of them do Roughlux, but that is at the expense of one of the greatest advantages of the Denco kits! By putting the heat exchanger in front of the radiator and relying on the already existing cooling system there, you loose most of the advantage these things have over air to air systems; in that once up front they will need airflow (from vehicle movement) to work at their best. In their normal condition you can remote mount the heat exchanger and with a small fan you can run the intercooler such that it works best at very low speeds, when an unaided air to air unit or a front mount heat exchanger won't be doing too much! And that slow speed stuff is when most off roaders want the power increases and the stability of charge air temps & EGT's that intercoolers offer.

So while you CAN do what you are suggesting, and mount the heat exchanger in front of the engine with all the other heat exchanging gear, one of the significant advantages of water to air intercoolers is that you can remote mount the heat exchanger (in the wheel wells, horizontally under the body, behind the cab, IN the cab, on the roof, etc - anywhere really, and with no need for direct front on air flow) and still get cooled charge air at slow speeds, and with the addition of an extra reservoir, you can get some really significant cooling advantages!

Make sense?

[KrEeCha]

is it possible to have too much cooling on the intercooler?

If you wanted to fit say a ford festiva (or similar small 4-cylinder) radiator to the system to keep it mega cool would this be mega beneficial?

[18RAP]

I fitted a water to air intercooler to my RD28t GQ patrol. Although it was not the denco brand (sourced through the states at a fraction of the cost). It made a unreal difference even without touching the pump!! I may be wrong but i can't see a problem in getting the water "mega cool" as every 4 degree C drop in intake temp is good for 1hp extra.

[Peter @ Aawen4x4]

The water/air intercooler coolant temp isn't going to get a heap cooler than ambient temp even with a massive radiator cooling the intercooler coolant; in fact one of the things that you see fairly often on performance vehicle intercoolers is the addition of an 'ice tray' or a tray that allows plain ice or even dry ice to be added either to the intercooler itself or to the intercooler coolant heat exchanger, the radiator. So no, I don't think you'd have major issues by using a larger radiator to cool down the coolant running thru the intercooler barrel.

But if you were considering cooling the charge air further, while that in itself wouldn't be an issue, one of the major problems facing intercooler producers is the way the size and flow rate of the intercooler barrel impacts on the air pressure of the charge air running thru them. The intercooler itself, ie the charge air heat exchanger, needs to be of suitable flow rate and design that the charge air wont expand too quickly and you don't actually lose a heap of charge air pressure (or boost) while it hasta be open enough to allow the charge air to loose heat to the coolant medium quickly enough to be worthwhile - and the converse is equally as true! The barrel also needs to have a suitable flow rate and be designed such that it won't cause an increase in the pressure of the charge air going thru it by constricting it too much! The 'barrel' size is pretty important to the flow rate and pressure of the charge air going thru it - get too large a barrel, you lose pressure; get too small a barrel, you increase pressure. That needs to be very carefully catered for in the design, size and flow rates aren't things you can easily vary, without creating issues that might not be what you want!

Cheers!

[KrEeCha]

I fitted a water to air intercooler to my RD28t GQ patrol. Although it was not the denco brand (sourced through the states at a fraction of the cost). It made a unreal difference even without touching the pump!! I may be wrong but i can't see a problem in getting the water "mega cool" as every 4 degree C drop in intake temp is good for 1hp extra.

And where might this intercooler have come from?

[RoughLux]

RoughLuxThese water to air systems rely on a seperate heat exchanger pump and an electric fan. Has anyone tried hooking into the vehilces cooling system? So there is no extra heat exhanger, pump and fan?

Some of them do Roughlux, but that is at the expense of one of the greatest advantages of the Denco kits! By putting the heat exchanger in front of the radiator and relying on the already existing cooling system there, you loose most of the advantage these things have over air to air systems; in that once up front they will need airflow (from vehicle movement) to work at their best. In their normal condition you can remote mount the heat exchanger and with a small fan you can run the intercooler such that it works best at very low speeds, when an unaided air to air unit or a front mount heat exchanger won't be doing too much! And that slow speed stuff is when most off roaders want the power increases and the stability of charge air temps & EGT's that intercoolers offer.

So while you CAN do what you are suggesting, and mount the heat exchanger in front of the engine with all the other heat exchanging gear, one of the significant advantages of water to air intercoolers is that you can remote mount the heat exchanger (in the wheel wells, horizontally under the body, behind the cab, IN the cab, on the roof, etc - anywhere really, and with no need for direct front on air flow) and still get cooled charge air at slow speeds, and with the addition of an extra reservoir, you can get some really significant cooling advantages!

Make sense?

Hmm maybe I was misunderstood. What i meant by 'hooking' into the vehicles cooling system is that can I simply tee off from an existing water source. Just like what is done for sourcing water for a water cooled turbo. Maybe a crude way of explaining would be to tee off at the top radiator hose (Cool water) run hose into the barrel intercooler, out of the intercooler and into the bottom radiator hose (Hot water). So that means no extra heat exchanger, no extra pump and no electic fan. The only problem i see is if the temperature of the water coming out of the radiator is low enough to cool the intercooler (and thus cooling the charged air) or is it going to be too warm?

In this scenario the engines cooling system also cools the intercooler. No wiring,pumps,electric fans.

Sorry for the hijack. ;)

[Peter @ Aawen4x4]

OK, now I see! I think you'd find that your vehicle cooling system wouldn't be able to take care of all the heat! As it is, even with additional and totally separate heat exchangers, the vehicles cooling system will be working at pretty much full capacity!

Many turboe-ed vehicles need extra cooling capacity to manage the additional heat load that running the turbo loads onto the vehicles cooling system, and adding an intercooler with a separate heat exchanger for the charge air is one way of reducing that additional load on the vehicles cooling system, so to turn around and put the load back onto it would be a retrograde step! Make sense?

So it's not actually a problem with the water coming out of the radiator being too warm to cool the intercooler, it's more that the water coming out of the intercooler & radiator will be too hot to cool the engine! And it won't matter very much which way you run the water, cos the total heat load will be too much for a cooling system of the standard vehicle capacity. You'd need to more than double the capacity to get the same cooling as running a separate intercooler heat exchanger, and that's not as easy as it sounds! Overall, the easiest way is to use the kits as they've been designed and developed over the years (In the past, they actually have tried the method you suggest, but moved away from it for the reasons above!)


Good question tho, just that it's already been tried and passed over as not a very useable method. Sorry!

[18RAP]

And where might this intercooler have come from?
Ebay.
I made my own 'kit' with new parts sourced through ebay. BUT as peter@Aawen4x4 has stated, there is a lot of time and money invested into these the denco kit's which justifies the purchase price.

Though with my whole setup in and done for under $600, it survived our round oz trip (roughly 25000km) and made a massive difference to reliable power. I didn't think i did to badly.

I would put up a picture but as i'm fairly behind when it comes to computers, I don't know how. I nearly took me a full year to type this post!!!!
Scott.

[Muckinhell]

You could also try having the air - air intercooler fitted in a bonnet mount situation using a patrol airscoop wich looks cool too, and fit it with a thermo fan and also a secondary windscreen washer set up, u can get from any auto store and plumb it in so it sprays via garden spray nozzles over the intercooler when u want. I have done this on my cruiser and it made a noticeable diffrence at high way speeds and is really handy at low speeds too using the evaporative method.