i'm getting pretty close to having my parts truck engine on the stand to start the refresh/rebuild/upgrade work on it. seeing the amount of work required to disassemble the front of our trucks (for the paint job i'm going to do on the CC at the same time the rebuilt engine does in), i'm not going to want to do all that a 3rd time for an intercooler install at a later date.

so, i'm starting the daydreaming process now of how the whole medium/high-performance motor is going to come together and got to thinking about intercooler placement.

I know the standard practice is to jam an SD intercooler in front of the AC condenser, and behind the grill. while obviously not impossible, it seems that requires a good bit of radiator support cutting and quite a bit of tube fitting and snaking down from the turbo and back to the plenums. plus, i'm always a road-less-travelled kind of guy...

with my plans of doing e-fuel, electric fans, and relocating my batteries back under the frame somewhere, I was thinking, maybe i'd try to get creative and use this freed-up space to locate an intercooler (or two) somewhere else.

some quick internet-poking-around led me to these (Mishimoto Universal Intercooler Z-Line, Black, by Mishimoto) which are reasonably priced and look like maybe two of them (or some of the other small ones) could be squeezed where the batteries used to be. of course some interesting cold-air-directing will be needed, but just wondering if anyone has done this, or knows of anyone having done anything like this.

I guess even the combined size of two of these would be less than a stock SD cooler, but i'd bet you'd get something like 75-90% of the benefit of the larger one - and maybe a few less install headaches - or at least different headaches :-)

just some thoughts to throw out there on a Monday morning :-)

 

I fit a 6.0 intercooler in my old truck with the only modification being cutting the 2 round holes in the core support and relocating the trans cooler. It fit with plenty of clearance.

 

^^I did the same thing.^^ Actually my trucool trans cooler is between my radiator and intercooler too.

That link with those intercoolers doesn't look like something that is going to even be worth putting on. I don't think they would help much at all. I think you'd be more along the lines of 20% of a SD intercooler. I didn't see what size the inlet/outlet are, but sure don't look like 3 inch either.

You'll like the batteries out of there, I know I do. I love being able to just shut my power switch off instead of having to unhook them when needed too. So, if you do that, install one. Good antitheft device if you need it too.

Ah, heck, just put another turbo in where one of the batteries was.

 

You'll blow them apart. They are only rated for 22psi of boost

 

good to know - I thought it had to be a 7.3SD intercooler. I bet there are a lot more 6.0's in junkyards than 7.3's. ...that was one of my other main concerns - finding a cooler.

well - i'm manual trans now, so I don't have to worry about the trans cooler at all :-) I guess part of it is knowing how desirable our core supports are getting these days, it somehow seems wrong to hack one up...

yeah, I thought I saw some with 3" inlet/outlets. and its been a long time since I've had thermodynamics class in college, but if I recall heat exchanger operation somewhat accurately, its a diminishing returns proposition with size. like say the air coming out of the turbo and into the intercooler is ~300F (a complete guess - I really don't know what it would be), and the air coming through the grill from the road is 80F. the compressed air in the cooler is going to drop rapidly at first, then more slowly as it approaches the ambient air temperature. so, if the big 6.0 intercooler gets the temp down to ~100F, one half the size would get it down to ~150F (rather than 200F, as you might guess).

does anyone know some typical intercooler inlet/outlet temps on our trucks? with those numbers and the dimensions of the intercooler, it'd be possible to calculate the relative cooling able to be achieved by a smaller unit.

and before anyone says it, yes, I am a big dork, but since i'm also cheap, broke, and lazy it comes in handy sometimes :-)


and yes, i'm set on the battery move! my cables are getting pretty beat up, there's so much space up under the truck - a nice little protective box and it'll be tons of extra room up front! ...plus with the mechanical fan out of there, it'll be even more spacious - now just to decide what to do with the space!

a good point! a higher end turbo can be expected to make ~30 psi or more, right?

I can't imagine that an all-aluminum, welded intercooler could only handle 22psi, though. I bet the lawyers made them state that number :-)



anyway - thanks for the feedback guys. this won't go anywhere fast, but its nice to have other guys to bounce my crazy ideas off of!