Intercooler Pressure Drop Info

[DaveFromColorado]

Howdy all, while at work today, I was talking to a guy about "intercooler pressure drop"

 

this guy is EXTREMELY intelligent, and the information he gave me was awesome - to sum it up basically, he took a draw-thru air meter, and a blow thru air meter, and a bunch of pressure gauages placed directly at the turbo, directly before the intercooler, between the intercoolers, directly after the second intercooler, and then in the intake manifold.

 

while testing he said he was using a 5.0 ford engine with a T03/04 hybird garret turbocharger (small for the 5.0 but enough to heat the hell out of the air) he also used about 100 lbs of dry ice in his testing to keep the intercoolers cooled enough to make a significent pressure drop.

 

he noticed about a 5lb drop across 2 "VERY LARGE gretty intercoolers used typically in the toyota supras set up in series" and even tho they were seeing a drop in the pressure the air meters were reading almost the identical ammount of air - which is the theory I always had.

 

so when someone comes up to you and bitches about their pressure drop, ask how much air they are losing, and see if they have an answer.

 

I asked the good question "why is it you are losing pressure then" but I already knew the answer, but I thought I'd like my ideas verified.

 

he said "hot air expands faster, making greater pressure, you cool that air down, and you have less pressure, but the same ammount of air"

 

I thought I'd share that with everyone.

 

--Dave.