Ice in the Intercooler box? Educate me.

sc98cbra

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I was hanging at a local parking lot friday evening with all these other muscle car fanatics hang out. I was really trying to find someone to race, but no one wanted to.

I pop'd the hood and let them look at it, One guy with a WS6 T/A said that his friend put ice in his intercooler box?

Sounded fishy to me, but wanted to make sure before I mess something up.

Thanks!
 

TORQJNKY

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Yes, you can fill your intercooler box with ice. Just let some of the fluid out before you do it, so you don't over fill. This is a quick way to cool your IAT2's down significantly before a race. The best way to do it is to turn the car off, drain some fluid out of the box, stuff it with ice and then jump the intercooler pump at the relay box. This will circulate ice cold water through the intercooler and your IAT2's will drop significantly. The car loves cold dense air and will make the most power while the temps are still down. You can put more ice in it before you run and the temps will stay low until the ice is overcome by the heat and melts completely. Your IAT2's will start to rise again.

It's a poor man's Killer Chiller.
 

Teethy

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Drag racers do stuff like this often. The main goal of ice in the intercooler reservoir is to chill the supercharger quicker and avoid heat soak. Heat soak can kill your HP but only occurs after you run the car hard.

If you are running it on the street just give it time to cool off between runs (1hr or more) and don't dog the car while you are going to the race spot.

*Edit* TorqJunky beat me to the punch. He gives you some more technical specs that are dead on. The reason I say I wouldn't bother is because if the car is cool already it won't give you more than 5-10 horsepower at best. It is more aimed at reducing the loss of HP after a race than gaining HP before...
 
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PistolWhip

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If you have the factory intercooler res, your not going to get enough ice in there to make any significant temp drops in IAT2.
The small volume of ice you'll be able to pack into it will quickly be melted by the returning hot coolant from the intercooler.
You'll probably get more out of just keeping the coolant flowing by jumping the pump than you will from trying to pack the stock tank with ice. At least with that the heat exchanger can dissipate some of the heat from the coolant rather than a large volume of it sitting still in the hot intercooler.
 

68_GT

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how much do aftermarket heat exchangers help ? are they really worth anything ? dual pass ? single pass ????
 

mu22stang

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The multipass doesn't hold an advantage over single. The larger fin area and higher coolant capacity of an aftermarket exchanger in theory provides better heat dissipating capabilities, but I'd like to see a test that proves that point.
 

PistolWhip

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The aftermarket H/E's don't really do much for lowering IAT2 temps considerably unless you run on road courses where heat is a major issue on all fronts. For road race guys, I think they need to take advantage of every little bit of cooling help they can get. The larger surface area gives H/E a more efficient means of dissipating excessive temps built up from long on gas and off gas laps. I don't road race at all. I noticed about an average of a 3-5* drop in temps which I attribute more to the increased volume of coolant than to the actual larger surface area. This was figured from about a month of data logging with the stock H/E and than another month with the LFP dual pass.
I noticed about another 2 or 3* average drop when I added the larger True Forged ice box which again I attribute to more coolant volume. However, the TF tank is very large and can hold allot of ice. It has a huge opening which makes packing it easy. It also has a petcock on the bottom of it so I can easily drain some coolant out of it after each run to make room for more ice.
 

GodStang

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I gained near 30rwhp on back to back dyno runs by putting ice in my LFP reservoir. Had ice in it before it was strapped down. By the time it was strapped down it was still cool but all ice had melted. We ran it on the dyno one pull. Drained a bit and added a huge chunk of ice and ran the dyno up again and it was well over 20rwhp and almost to 30rwhp.
 

Mr.GSXR1000

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im going to try this, so you just use that jumper wire and then pull it off when ready to race? Will chunks of ice claug anything up? Or by jumping it burn the pump up? Just some questions i was wanting to ask. thanks for your help thanks
 

GodStang

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im going to try this, so you just use that jumper wire and then pull it off when ready to race? Will chunks of ice claug anything up? Or by jumping it burn the pump up? Just some questions i was wanting to ask. thanks for your help thanks


Most ice boxes I have seen have a screen over the outlet so nothing will get out. No jumping it should not burn up the pump its the same as it running when you are driving.
 

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