Redid the intercooler water system today

[Aaron]

I've been wanting to do this for some time, as the way I had it, while it worked, wasn't optimal. First, I didn't have a reservoir. So no ice, and no overflow tank. I had used clear tubing from Home Depot, and it got stiff and started to leak, although very little, over the past month or two it lost enough water that the system stopped working. Since I rarely drive the car (And very rarely boost it), the boost is/was conservatively low, and it wasn't recording any knock, I wasn't too worried about it, but with the track opening soon, I wanted to redo it.

I bought a reservoir from a C4 Corvette. The C5's can work too, they are not as tall, but longer. It was like $60 brand new, and has a level sensor in it. Since the system's temperature, and therefore pressure, will not raise very much, a traditional overflow will not work. But the Corvette reservoir is a flow through type, so water is constantly circulating. I redid the copper lines a little, for the person who asked, it is Type M, and works great. I was also able to get the heater hose lines for like $7 a piece from the Auto Parts store. The system is working great, I'm looking forward to bumping it back up to 14psi, and taking some datalogs.

Before:


After:

[Aaron]

I finally got the chance to play the last couple days. I adjusted my boost controller, and drove it to work. I've got my ECU tuned to where it will dive rich at 15psi, and I was hitting that. So I couldn't do much WOT driving, because as soon as it'd build boost, it'd hit 15 and die. So today I turned it back a little, and was getting a steady 14psi. Perfect. I don'y have my tuning laptop with me, so I couldn't get any logs, but eyeing the A:F gauge shows it's on the safe side. As boost starts to come on it's at 12.5, but once I've got 14psi, it dives to about 11, then towards 6,000rpm starts to pick up to 12.5 again. So once I get my Dell back I'm going to do some logs, get that straightened out, and hit the dyno and 1/4mi again.

Oh yah, it's fucking fast. Scary fucking fast.

[CincinnatiFiero]

You need to come up with some sort of floor and probably get a vented hood. Having that all open has to form a huge ass air pocket, as if the fiero didn't already have that problem. Maybe it gets scary because of how much nose lift your getting from the now poor aerodynamics.

[Aaron]

You need to come up with some sort of floor and probably get a vented hood. Having that all open has to form a huge ass air pocket, as if the fiero didn't already have that problem. Maybe it gets scary because of how much nose lift your getting from the now poor aerodynamics.

You're completely right on all counts. However, I really can't since I jacked up the front end. I'm going to wait until I rebuild the car, at which point I'm going to enclose the bottom, and have a vented hood.

[fieromadman]

hmm not too shabby if I wouldn't have bought the cooler and adapted that to work I would have tried this... Only problem with that system seems to be that its not really easy to put ice into the thing.