Installed an Afco GT500 heat exchanger in car

[MalcolmV8]

Thought I'd share for others. Here's a fairly easy and very clean way to install one. First I removed the factory crash bar and replaced with this light weight hoop.

BTW factory crash bar there weighed 14 lbs. The hoop weighted 4.6 lbs.

I mocked this up

Making this

You can see where this is going. A bracket off the hoop.

The idea was to fit it like this

Mocked up like this

And finally in the car

It's a beast for sure. Looks almost like the engine radiator.

Does hit anything. Clears quite well.

Bumper went on without any mods or cutting

Much more to come. One small step in a very new and different setup I'm working on.

 

[xxjaymanzxx]

That's badass I like it

 

[tones_RS3]

Great innovation man!!! Awesome.
Good luck with your build.

 

[MG0h3]

Your engine is missing.......what are we up to?

Gen2R? I know youve said probably not turbo because you have turbo cars already.

Where did you get the hoop?

 

[MalcolmV8]

Oh you noticed that lol. Same blower, just building a new engine for it Sent heads to Livernois for an even better port job and going to domed pistons this time for even more compression.

The hoop came from http://donathenracing.com/

 

[MG0h3]

hahah geez man you never stop! Wanting to haze the tires in 4th gear too now?

Thanks for the link

 

[MalcolmV8]

hahah geez man you never stop! Wanting to haze the tires in 4th gear too now?

Thanks for the link

Haha I was already doing that. Addressing suspension and traction issues too though so hopefully it'll be hooking this time.

 

[98 Saleen Cobra]

You're going with domed pistons? Jesus man, was the power before just not enough?! Didn't you already have a badass set of heads? You must enjoy ripping shit apart lol that's crazy

 

[MalcolmV8]

You're going with domed pistons? Jesus man, was the power before just not enough?! Didn't you already have a badass set of heads? You must enjoy ripping shit apart lol that's crazy

I do lol, fun hobby. If some compression is good, more must be better right? we'll find out haha.
Heads were locally ported by a guy who was supposed to be really good at this. However some other locals had less than pleasing service or results from him so began questioning my port job. I initially was going to go back to him but he treated another local terrible so I went the safe route and mailed the heads to Livernois for their CNC port which is supposed to be one of the best.

 

[MG0h3]

Hope you got that deal they were offering recently!

Theres a set of those FRPP/Roush ported factory DC heads for sale but Id be cheaper using my heads with the Livernois deal still.

What kind of compression are you thinking of bumping to? @11?

 

[MalcolmV8]

Yeah I sure did. That was a good sale they had running. I considered grabbing a set of DC heads and sending it their way till I did a little more research on them and found out the revised water jackets take up more room in the casting. Livernoise CNC port would go right through the water jackets so they would have to hand port them instead and take off less material. So porting my stock 03 heads was a better option. They went ahead and converted them to 8 thread heads too. I wasn't to thrilled with that, 4 threads have served me well for 14 years and drilling and tapping the threads just seems like another layer to fail. They found a hair line crack and had to weld right by one of the threads ruining so it either had to get tapped back to a 4 thread or just redo them all, so I did.

Yes 11. Initially I was trying to do 13:1 but Ed advised me of potential clearance issues with the cylinder head he'd seen from some mocking up he'd done. So then I settled on 12.5. As a couple weeks went by before ordering the pistons my son and I were chatting about possible power tours and other things we'd like to do and at those compression levels the car is only good for race gas / E85 and would really limit what we can do. So down to 11 it is. At least then if we had to we could run on pump gas & torco with less aggressive pulley's and timing and cruise if we had to. Seems lame.... lol. I still consider calling back and changing my order on the pistons back to 12.5

 

[MG0h3]

Wow. All good info Malcolm.

I always keep my eye out for DCs but kindof decided just to roll with my 03 heads as well and port them down the road if needed.

I guessed 11:1 because that seems to have worked very well for the coyote. All you need to do now is engineer VVT for the 4.6....

 

[MalcolmV8]

I would love VVT and have considered coyote swapping the car many times. My car's all setup though and runs great and I would be starting over on that but probably next major build will be a coyote swap. They're just so far superior in every way.

 

[MG0h3]

That they are. Youre getting closer though with the compression. Crazy that they make the same power on half the boost as us. But, I just like the Cobra better for whatever reason.

Cant wait to see the results!

On and on the KC, just sick of dealing with it or curious to see what your new HE setup will do?

 

[MalcolmV8]

On and on the KC, just sick of dealing with it or curious to see what your new HE setup will do?

No one single answer to the KC setup, a combo of problems. One been the car has custom cams and idle had been temperamental and "sensitive" if you will. Every time you have the a/c kicking on or off it would upset the RPMs a bit and then re-settle in. Annoying.

I also like a clean engine bay and the abundance of hoses is not for me. Plus they're all wrapped in heat shielding so they're big and bulky.

A bigger issue was my a/c constantly giving me issues. I can't say if it was the burden of the killer chiller or just unrelated. I ended up swapping out the compression, the condenser, the lines and tried multiple orifice tubes of different sizes that would adjust the cooling rate between cabin and KC. I tried 50/50 split, mostly KC and even mostly cabin just to see. In the end my a/c was just not working like it used to I don't think.
I tried regular R134a and the industrial R134a replacements as well as experimenting with pressures slightly out of spec but that only made things worse.

Even looking back at data logs the KC did help but really doesn't solve the problem. It gets your IAT2 temps down a lot in idle and normal cruise but WOT they climb very quickly because it simply can't keep up. Do multiple WOT pulls and they temps get really crazy high. It pulls down after a few minutes of driving but when you analyze that what good is that? Great temps when you don't really need them? Not to mention running the a/c that hard pulling so much heat was really heating up my radiator and caused engine temps to run a good noticeable amount hotter.

They were definitely better than pre killer chiller days but it left a lot to be desired. So rather than continuing to replace parts and keep working at the a/c just to get back to subpar results I decided to go a whole different route.

 

[MG0h3]

^^gotcha. Odd that some people have suck stellar results and a few dont.

 

[PWORLDSTANG]

I do lol, fun hobby. If some compression is good, more must be better right? we'll find out haha.
Heads were locally ported by a guy who was supposed to be really good at this. However some other locals had less than pleasing service or results from him so began questioning my port job. I initially was going to go back to him but he treated another local terrible so I went the safe route and mailed the heads to Livernois for their CNC port which is supposed to be one of the best.

How receptive was Livernoise to porting your heads that had already been ported?

I purchased the FRPP Roush heads with the intent of having Livernoise open them up with their port. When I called them to move forward, they strongly advised against it, saying they could get the numbers claimed on their CNC port, but could not guarantee it and simply didn't want to touch them because of this.

Luckily for me I was able to trade those heads for some brand new 05+ heads for their Stage 3 port with oversized valves. I ended up spending more in the long run but I purchased what I felt was the best CNC port job available for our motor.

With all this said, you had a hand port from a local guy (not Roush/Yates) using an older casting, and were still able to get what you needed done. So I'm curious on if you received any initial push back. Also, did you go with oversized valves or no?

 

[94slowbra1]

looking forward to the new set up. you said its going to be the same blower? i think i saw you list the gt500 t/b for sale? if so what are you switching over too? i like the idea of this gt500 h/e. what model is it? looks great

 

[MalcolmV8]

How receptive was Livernoise to porting your heads that had already been ported?

I purchased the FRPP Roush heads with the intent of having Livernoise open them up with their port. When I called them to move forward, they strongly advised against it, saying they could get the numbers claimed on their CNC port, but could not guarantee it and simply didn't want to touch them because of this.

Luckily for me I was able to trade those heads for some brand new 05+ heads for their Stage 3 port with oversized valves. I ended up spending more in the long run but I purchased what I felt was the best CNC port job available for our motor.

With all this said, you had a hand port from a local guy (not Roush/Yates) using an older casting, and were still able to get what you needed done. So I'm curious on if you received any initial push back. Also, did you go with oversized valves or no?

None at all. I called them and explained what I had and they were very helpful about looking them over to see if they could repair them or work with them or if they were trash and I should get another set of heads.
There are a few areas where the hand port took off a hair to much so the CNC port didn't touch but its pretty minimal and they said my heads will still flow really good.

looking forward to the new set up. you said its going to be the same blower? i think i saw you list the gt500 t/b for sale? if so what are you switching over too? i like the idea of this gt500 h/e. what model is it? looks great

Yes still running the large mono blade with GT500 bolt pattern. I just have multiple of them and selling off extras lol.
The heat exchanger with fans is Afco 80280PRO.

 

[Quick Strike]

Malcolm, Did you get flow numbers with the heads? I am curious how they compare to others.