Scottish Elises

It`s a well known fact the standard I/C is pants, I never really drove the car long or hard enough to notice heatsoaking bfore I had the Forge I/C fitted so can`t really comment - but have read loads of reports of std 220 cars struggling to pass N/A cars on track.

My Forge has been great on track so far but you can definately feel the car starting to loose some throttle sharpness towards the end of a track session and atprolonged high speeds (120+) the IAT shoots above 50C.

Really Light Stuff sell a supplementary air cooling kit (new I/C shroud, some 2.5" ducting and scoops) but it`s getting on for $1K with shipping and taxes. So I decided to get busy with some DIY. - It doesn`t look as snazzy as the RLS set up with it`s C/F but it`s cost me just over £70 and I`ve used some bigger 3" ducting.

Just need to get out and do some testing now.

RLS claim 3x the airflow above 70mph, so we`ll see.

Hi,

I thought the the Forge I/C was not suitable with the single engine cover mount, you seem to have no issues. Was it a tight fit?

Thanks,

It's a ight fit but doesn't rub on anything (I have the powerflex engine mount inserts which definatelty help out).

I'm quite surprised that no super charger manufacturer has added a refrigerant compressor to the shaft. I know some people have an air-water-air system using the a/c rad slot at the front, but you could probably reuse the a/c rad (condenser) itself to better effect to "freeze" the intercooler (much like water sprays but with a recycled refrigerant rather than a sacrificial one).

The problem with natural air cooling (whether or not via water interim stage) is that you have such a narrow working temperature differential. When the ambient is 30C (France) and you're trying to keep the inlet at 40C or less you only have a 10C headroom and the compressed air is in contact with the "cold" intercooler for only a fraction of a second - if the intercooler was at 0C then you would get a lot more value from it and/or it could be much smaller to achieve the same thing (in fact something like a laminova oil cooler would probably work if the evap system could be incorporated into it).

On Frolic last year I found the on track performance of the 240 tailed off significantly once I had been on track for 10 minutes or so and after about 11-12 in the morning it didn't really recover as ambient air temperatures are so high. There were a couple of people with air-water-air systems and these definitely worked better, but still suffered the same fate after a few more laps.

Cheers,
Robin

Spot on robin, I used to have a water/air set up on my supercharged m3. With the heat exchanger built into the actual intake manifold it meant pressure losses were much less also.

Water has a much higher heat latency but unfortunately once it does heat up, it takes much longer to cool down again. Most high powered drag cars use water/air for these very reasons - it can absorb masses of heat for short periods of time.

The refrigerant is a good idea, not sure how much extra drag the compressor would add tho and how that would effect the efficiency of the blower. It starts to get very complicated and difficult to gauge the actual benefits.

I think it's largely accepted that air/water is needed to go much beyond 300HP on the 2zz safely. So this is maybe something I'll look into more if I keep the car - or maybe some sort of chemical cooling.

I think Ford tried a refrigerated intercooler

Decided to add some "collectors" to the end of the ducts to scoop in some more air. These are 6" x 3" so twice the area of the duct alone, I`ve also replaced the mesh with some much more open stuff (same as the mesh above the radiator).

I do wonder how pressurised the engine bay becomes at speed tho and how much extra air can be taken in without evacuating more out, I think a rear panel delete will be next but not really keen on the "naked" look, maybe I could replace the panels with the same mesh ?

Knockhill tomorrow night so it`ll give me a chance to see how much of a difference it makes on the track, (tho the weather itself has gotten much colder) - it seems to have lowered the IAT`s by about 10 C during hard road use.

Was 13 degrees in Fife when I nipped out at lunchtime.

If you really want to go faster then buy a K - plenty of SC cars struggling to pass egor last week

Cheers,
Robin

robin wrote:If you really want to go faster then buy a K - plenty of SC cars struggling to pass egor last week

Cheers,
Robin

LOL,

Had an early S2 sitting on my tail last night, thankfully it was running a 230HP Honda conversion.