Am I really crazy?

[JohnnyO]

First off, I am so glad to have stumbled upon this forum while I was searching for a condenser upgrade from ACKITS for my outdated Mazda. Have spent hours trying to match a parallel/piccolo to the Mazda's serpentine dimensions in the Four Seasons eCatalog. What a waste of time! Found the SF12-0438 in 3 minutes when I found ACKITS. Thank you Tim, I'm ordering today! Here's where the craziness begins- I have a 19 gallon aluminum fuel tank out of old sailboat.It is now fitted in the spare wheel well of the Mazda to work as a cold sink for a liquid-to-air intercooler, and the reservoir of chilled 50/50 water meth for injection to reduce intake temps even more. In the 80's and 90's I installed many Vintage Air kits, several dual air kits in buses and vans, one-off custom jobs in exotics and experimental aircraft. I am not an engineer, just a technician who reads, follows directions, and not afraid to try. Maybe someone here has tried some thing similar, and can share their experiences. Here's the plan- Cut access in tank top for bilge pump HVLP to circulate coolant to and from intercooler, and drop in an evaporator coil I've made that is in line between bilge and intercooler. The coil is .25 ID copper wound inside 3" aluminum thick walled tubing of 10" length with .75 hose fittings on each end. It will adsorb heat from both the flow through it on the way to the intercooler plus from the surrounding fluid through the thick aluminum. I will splice into the hi and lo hard lines at the evap ports for the rear coil feed and return. My debate is which TXV, and where to put it. I am concerned about internal vs external regulation, adjustability, and it being in the water/meth mix as part of the coil assembly. I am open to suggestions and recommendations.

[Tim]

Thanks for the support. Order has been processed.

[bohica2xo]

No, not as crazy as you think. I did a similar thing to a Typhoon for a customer back in 1992. I used a large ice chest mounted in the cargo area to hold the tank and heat exchanger assembly.

Air to liquid intercooler in the engine bay. We circulated 50% antifreeze / water mixture. Used a flexible impeller pump to circulate the mixture. The heat exchanger was simply an evaporator inside the aluminum box full of antifreeze / water. Alongside the box inside of the cooler there was room for 5+ pounds of dry ice.

A block type TXV bolted to the evaporator did a fine job. A little tweaking would hold the box at 28f with the circulation pump off. Had to put a drain in the cooler to get rid of condensation. 5+ gallons of heat transfer fluid @ 28f will pull that underhood intercooler down pretty well.

At Bandimere it ran great, you could crank the boost up far enough to break expensive driveline parts...

[ice-n-tropics]

Ford patented the SuperCooler with a circuit in the charge air intercooler heat X to feed stored 30 F refrigerated glycol.
hotrodac

[bohica2xo]

Got a patent number for that one? Love to see it.

The Typhoon already had a liquid intercooler, so the conversion was begging to be done.

[ice-n-tropics]

Patent US6006540A to Ford (the guys with the Yote engine).

[JohnnyO]

Thanks for the responses and input everybody. One of the consequences of using the water meth injection system reservoir as the L/A intercooler heat sink will be the rate of consumption of the cooling fluid by the injection system. The typical systems are 1 to 5 gallons, and do not hold enough volume to be efficient heat sinks, and need replenishing every week or two. Temp exchange with intercooler heat soaks the fluid in a very short period of time, especially in a daily driver in the summertime. Now I look forward to the larger reservoir actually providing cooler mix to the injector(more efficient) as well as much longer intercooler efficiency time. If I am lucky there may even be some latent cooling from the rear storage keeping the cabin cooler as drive times get longer. Of course it will be EXPENSIVE to fill the tank, but maybe I can go a month or two without having to fill up now. Don't have a grasp on the extra weight penalty yet, but know there will be some effect on acceleration, expect better handling because of better weight distribution on a front wheel drive vehicle, and do not know what the extra demand on the compressor will be. I know I will have a much better condenser than the factory stock unit to handle the extra load shortly, and I will be watching the line pressures and temps closely for a while. I did decide to immerse the externally regulated TXV, and am adding an extra accumulator/expansion chamber in-tank right at the intercooler return fitting. I will let you know what I break first!