I'm thinking of doing an air to water intercooler. I was talking to an older audi guy (used to race them) and he was talking about how he did it on his old quattro. He said it is the most efficient cooling system for the turbo. So I did some researching. Not many a4's out there with it done. The only ones that had it were pushing over 300whp, which I'm not gonna touch most likely. But he said we could put together a system for around 500-600 dollars, and it would always be colder air....which is awesome because I live in FL where it is HOT! I'm just wondering if anyone else has thought of this or even done it. I would also like everyone's input on the idea.
Thanks.
Joshua

 

well crap for that price you cant go wrong.. we will want to know how its done.. so pics and writeup will be expected ... I havent seen any A4's with it.. but maybe some of the other guys have

 

That is what I was thinking. It's about 200 more than I was going to spend on a fmic, but it sounds like it would be much better.....it just won't look as good.

 

Curious how an air to water intercooler would be better than an air cooled?

I can't figure out the physics of this.

 

water takes a lot longer to heat up than air....right??? so with a fmic...air is passing over hot air......cooling it a little.
whereas with the air to water....air is passing through watercooled fins.....which absorb a lot more heat than just air would......cooling the charged air much more.
The water in the air to water intercooler has its own reservoir, and its own radiator....so it doesn't get hot. Also, no need for extra i/c piping......it would just replace the stock side mount location.....just have to run a couple of water and electrical lines, which is a lot easier than running i/c piping if you ask me.

I have talked to a guy that did this on his 1.8r b5 and he did it for his senior design project in college. He showed me that it worked up to 50% better than a fmic.

I am just really interested in it. I hopefully will have some time in the near future to acquire all of the needed parts and start.

 

yeah it should work just fine, Alot of superchargers are offering a similar system that sit directly under the s/c and they work well.

 

I agree that the transfer from the air intercooler to water would be faster, but then the water has to transfer the heat into air at a radiator. You then have to have a pump to circulate the water through the system and would need a large radiator up front to get rid of the heat. Otherwise you start getting warm water returning to the intercooler and heat transfer drops.

I suppose someone could figure out the necessary size of a radiator.

I'd just go with a FMIC.

 

?
The radiator for the intercooler is about a quarter of the size of our radiator, which still allows plenty of air across the engine radiator. With a front mount, you are blocking over half of the radiator, so how can you say that the intercooler radiator is worse?