It’s been a while since I’ve made a good post on AR and I’m now ready to fill everybody in on what I’ve been up to this these past few months. Everybody knows one of the biggest issues with these V8s being stuffed into our relatively tiny sedan engine bays is the heat factor. In this journey to abolish as much heat as possible, some of us have taken quite a few steps including: cats removal, phenolic intake spacers, oil cooler, cold air intakes/other intake modifications, a/w intercooler, and/or heat shielding. More recently, the Killer Chiller was discovered and we’ve been seeing intake temps 30+ degrees fahrenheit below ambient ever since which I find amazing. I was all ready to pick one up myself, but the Killer Chiller has a few issues in my opinion; it takes up valuable space, has a fairly intense installation process, and it costs more than it probably should. Those things considered, I decided to take Kincaid Performance’s Killer Chiller idea and improve upon it. My goals for this kit include: use up less space, free up other space, simple installation, and a price tag that’s easy to swallow.
Seeing as I’m just a couple weeks or so away from having an MVP, I think it’s time to share what I’ve come up with. Initially, when I looked at my setup, I felt like I could beit from having an immersion chiller rather than a counterflow chiller. It would be much simpler and it would work basically the same way as putting a bunch of ice in the tank. Here is the drawing I came up with:
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/922873043.png
After I came up with this idea, I spoke to several people, mainly Jimmy Bones, to familiarize myself with the a/c system in our cars and also the Killer Chiller setup. I also spent quite a bit of time just researching a/c systems in general to get as great of an understanding of the topic as I could. I’m still learning stuff, but I think I definitely have a pretty good grasp on it now.
I put together a diagram of the a/c and intercooler lines for my stage 2 setup:
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/864177887.jpg
I then put together a diagram, with Jimmy’s help of course, of the same intercooler setup with the KC installed:
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/128559649.jpg
And finally, after much thought and deliberation, I put together a diagram of my proposed tank chiller setup:
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/778732825.jpg
You will notice this diagram is simpler than the KC diagram. Both of the a/c lines that I’ll be splicing into are easily accessible in the engine bay, and the line to run to and from the expansion tank is minimal. I plan on removing the heat exchanger which will also allow me to relocate the water pump, hopefully, and free up some space behind the bumper. Unfortunately, with the way everything was installed by JHM, my bumper is unable to sit flush on the front end of my car which is quite annoying to somebody with a bad case of OCD like I have. This will also make any front end/service position maintenance much easier.
- Use less space, check
- Free up used space, check
- Simple installation, check
Now onto price. Depending on which fittings and a/c hose is used, this project can be completed for around $100 plus the cost to build/modify your current expansion tank. For proof of concept, I’ll be having my fabricator modify my current tank which came with my setup. He felt this was a good start and when I want more we can talk about building fully custom tanks from scratch using his massive water jet cutter. Price for the work I’m having done is $400. So even with this larger initial cost, the cost is nearly half of what the Killer Chiller costs.
- Better price, check
Now, at this point I wanted to figure out a way to improve on the performance. Cue the plated counterflow chiller. Seeing as how the Killer Chiller is just a standard counterflow heat exchanger, I started looking for a unit that would acheive the necessary performance while reducing the amount of space it would take up. Also, I wondered how this would all fit into the application. Here are the quick blueprints I threw together for my proposed design:
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/912978438.jpg
My tank integrates the heat exchanger into the tank. A shelf on top of the tank will encase it so everything will essentially all be one piece. The refrigerant will flow through the counter flow chiller, into the internal coil, and back out into the lo-side line before the dryer to ensure the refrigerant is ready to go back into the compressor. Now, the water in the tank is being chilled with the coil while the water being added to the tank is already chilled to prevent it from heating the water source back up. This 2 step cooling effect should not only speed up the cooling times, but I’m hoping it will also improve upon the perfomance and get those temps down even lower.
To quantify the effects of this setup, I just purchased a VFIZ from Qmatis which I’m really excited to install. I’ll probably go a little sensor crazy because I really want to track to entirety of what this kit is doing. I can’t wait to share results as once this kit is doing it’s thing on my car, I’ll be getting a custom race gas tune and shooting for 700+ whp.
I had no intention of turning this into a sellable kit, but I’ve received some good feedback as well as some decent interest considering I’ve only shared this idea with a few poeople. I know there aren’t a ton of Stage 1+/2 supercharged cars out there, but I think there might be quite a few more if we start seeing the 1/4 mile times drop into the low 11s and especially 10s. That being said, for those of you who are interested in running this kit, definitely let me know as I’d like to gauge interest and get the best possible pricing for everybody for completely custom tanks.
I’ll keep updating this thread with my progress.