WHAT MAKES MORE? INTERCOOLED OR NON? 

Simple = He Told us the secret over and over... The Timing was still set at the "Safe" setting for the Non-IC Intake Temps (non-aftercooled if you want to be technical) and anyone who has "Fixed" the 70s smog engines will tell you Timing = Power if your Air Charge (and Boost Pressures) allow it... Cooler IAC + Less Boost = MORE TIMING!

I used to be a hvac installer and I was trained never to make turns as sharp as you are with air ducts because it would creat backup pressure that would reduce air flow. The more sharp bends you make, the less airflow get. Also, the longer the ducts, the less airflow.

Think mister Banks established that higher air density produces more power.

Awsome thanks for the video! Just picked up a water to air cooler like the one you used for 200 with a zr1 heat exchanger. I'm so happy to hear that I will be making safer hp than running non intercooler. Thanks for your hard work Richard.

Air flow/velocity. The slower air not only flows more sluggishly, it also reduces fuel evaporation due to a double-whammy effect of 1, lower heat to the fuel, and 2, raising the boiling point of the fuel adiabatically. Simply put, in a naturally aspirated engine, the temperature rises and the pressure drops, increasing fuel vaporization [more so for a carburetor than fuel injection, but the principle is the same either way] while in a cooled boosted engine, the pressure rises and the temperature drops, making it harder and taking it longer for the fuel to evaporate. This means 1, less fuel burns efficiently, 2, lower cylinder pressures, and 3, slower fuel combustion [leads to piston bottom knock, fouling, detonation and overheating, all of which can damage the engine]. When dropping the temps and raising the pressure, one needs to make sure that there are proper steps taken to adequately evaporate the fuel before it enters the power stroke. Some people [and I say 'foolishly', while others say 'advisedly'] rely on the cylinder's internal heat to vaporize the fuel, both cooling the cylinders, pistons and heads [only to then re-heat them while also washing oil off the cylinders and thinning the crank case oil] and force evaporating some of the large droplets of fuel. This is more pronounced with summertime gasoline mixes [less so with ethanol and methanol added fuels, but more so with nitromethane and water added fuels] because there is less butane and more pentane, hexane, heptane, octane and nonane which have higher boiling points and lower vapor pressures so they do not quickly evaporate in the hot summer. Since most people race in the summer, this effect is pretty reliable for most racers not using specialized blends of fuel or straight alcohol, which seems to be relatively immune to this problem, due to its very low vapor pressure and boiling point. While there re still advantages to cooled boost, it depends on many other extenuating factors, especially the type, age and quality .of the fuel being used, the fuel delivery system, and the fuel enrichment settings.

Being from Florida I feel like I’d still want the intercooled version with less power because after 3-4 highway pulls the non-intercooled version won’t make more power.

Always awesome videos and tons to learn thanks man keep that sbf stuff coming..

Drive it around for 20 minutes and see what happens. The non intercooled will be pulling timing once it starts knocking

Perfect ! Time to research those vids for 800 hp inter coolers

The biggest point of adding an intercooler is to allow you to run more boost and/or more timing. Intercoolers always pose a restriction to flow and you can see this with the drop in boost pressure. If you keep the non-intercooled timing level and don’t reduce the pulley size to restore boost pressure, it’s no wonder there was a power loss. I’d like to see this test repeated with an optimized timing curve without changing the pulley, and then another test to change pulley size to restore boost level and optimize timing. I’m sure you’ll see big gains with the intercooler.

Essentially the same power with big intercooler or no intercooler, because same fuel. Timing advance with the cooler charge would up the horsepower safely.

I’m watching this after just obtaining my 351 and a vortech s trim, this makes me extremely excited in terms of power numbers and where I’m going

"5 liter parts....5 liter power"

Couple of things: -Would have been good to measure boost pressure and temperature both before and after the intercooler. -With that in mind, remember that despite the fixed speed of the blower, the centrifugal compressor behaves on a non-linear curve. If there is less restriction after the blower it will move more mass flow. -Also remember that the blower fan/compressor curve and thus its performance is purely dependant on the pressure across the blower. So measuring temp and pressure between the IC and blower is important. -Also that with a higher pressure across the blower, the engine has to work harder to turn the blower = more parasitic loss at the crank Thus if you're not knock limited you're going to be moving more kg/s of airflow (or lbs/min in the USA ;) ) thus more power available. What fuel were you using? and was the test knock limited? was it e85 and offering good fuel cooling? -Best to measure temp in either °Kelvin or °Rankine so that the °△T is relative to an absolute scale. Because science :) Using a non-absolute scale (especially Fahrenheit) inflates the relative differences. My guess is that the temp and pressure after the blower with the IC was sufficiently high to restrict flow across the blower. With the larger IC recovering most of those gains through improved density after it cooler. It's an interesting edge case. More data points would be ideal ;). Keep testing. I'll keep watching.

It gives me more questions than answers. And I'm happy to know about it. So here is my hypothesis: Maybe this engine has something that separates air and fuel like a very effective swirl so if fuel atomization it's not the right (like a carburetor) the excess heat help the engine to perform a better combustion, so if I'm right putting a good carburetor instead of fuel injection could unlock some power.

If you calculate the air density, it comes out nearly exactly the same for the non-intercooled and the larger intercooler, which explains why it made basically the same power. As other people have commented, though, with a little more timing you could get more power out of the intercooled version.

No increase in timing for the intercooled/colder air charges.

I have a 99 s351 saleen I'm working on and wanted to do a aftercooler just like this. Shows me that the aftercooler wont work and back to square one. Thanks for the R&D. Keep it coming

I think the main purpose of the intercooler is to A. lower the charge temperature & B. lessen the chance of detonation and enable you to run more timing advance to create more power. I bet if you had re-adjust the timing in the tune with the larger intercooler it would have surpassed the non-intercooled HP numbers by a good bit.

We have ran similar testing on Yamaha Waverunners which have crankcase mounted Centrifugal Superchargers from the factory.Running up to 30psi the Big Chinese/Ebay intercoolers always made more power than the smaller Vortech/garrett cores.The cheaper cores with less fin density always flow more CFM and with open fresh water cooling intake temps do not change much either way.The larger and cheaper the better IMO

Great testing and information. Would loved to have seen WMI included in the testing.

The intercooler version had less power due to boost drop after the IC and since the supercharger sends a fixed amount of air, the restriction of the IC is not made up for like a turbo could with some boost controller tinkering. But still is best to run the IC as it would be the more stable and more safe too run specially on a street car.

I think in realworld application i.e. in car the temps for non intercooler do to underhood temps and more load from accessory assembly and load generated from drivetrain and actual road force. And agree with you using intercooler regardless

Why wouldn’t you take advantage of the intercooler and give them a fair chance by being able to go up on timing with cooler air temperatures, that would be the whole point of intercoolers? 🧐

You know damn well it has to do with ignition timing. Timing is needed to take advantage of the cooler charge. You know that basic rule, every 1 degree of cooler charge you can make 1/2 hp (ie drop 100* can pick up 50hp)...with the appropriate ignition timing...

Rich forgets to tell you that turbo lag is decreased with no intercooler and the turbos will come on sooner in the rpm range. On a supercharged app you have no lag pretty much at all and even with a cooler no lag. Some turbos take too long to spool up

We want merch! Tell me where I can buy "The Other Guys" shirt, and I will buy it. Great video, like usual!

Many of you are forgetting, it's a stock, junkyard bottom end. I didn't hear Rich say anything about changing pistons or even the ring gaps (maybe I missed something). It probably has cast or hypereutectic pistons and stock ring gaps. You can't push 'em TOO hard.

Pressure drop 2 psi is at least 40hp. Then timing is optimized for the higher iat. If the same boost level is run you will see more power then non ic. Then timing optimized for the lower iat will make more power again.

An intercooler also adds air volume between the motor and supercharger, which need to be compressed and causes a drop in boost

Simply put, less dynamic pressure loss combined with better atomization, and is subsequent cooing effect, homogeneity, and increased burn efficiency... on the other hand, continue the comparison using a) water injection, or b) methanol injection, to see the effects of further cooling. BTW, I really appreciate these videos.

You said you did not adjust the timing. My hunch is the engine needed more spark timing to make power with cold air. It would have been useful to have an air flow turbine on the inlet to see how much air flow you picked up with the big intercooler.

Great question! I didn’t see a picture of the actual piping to the throttle body from the blower and through the “good” intercooler. I suspect lots of turns and increased restriction compared to the very efficient-looking run non-intercooled. How ‘bout meth injection or throttle body (sniper) injection with E85 on a good single-plane? Compared to the good intercooler... Thanks for all the good info!

Another great non LS upload! Waiting, for the 3 engines, in the back of your truck!😀

The distance the air travels and the turbulence created with the extra plumbing. With the charge coming off the supercharger directly in to the intake. There is a possible vortex effect happening. By adding the bends of the extra pipe, and the cores in the cooler to flow through that effect is lost. Same issues happen with a tail pipe turbo system. The speed and velocity of the boost charge decreases over distance traveled. The CFM rating drops. Best way to explain it is looking at your air compressor. It's duty cycle vs. cfm. Using a cut off wheel it starts off fast, but slows down while the compressor is running. Your cfm dropped while running the tool. If you don't have a proper compressor to run at a higher cfm rating then the tools duty cycle. You will run out of full power operation quickly. While the tool is still working and the compressor is maintaining a lower air pressure it still work, but not at its max potential.

You could have bumped up the timing and fuel to take advantage of the cooler charge temps of course even the slightest restriction is going to show a drop in power if you run the same timing and fuel. Until the charge temperature becomes a problem.

I don't know but my call is, the blower displacement is sized for a 5 liter and compensating for the low displacement blower (in this application) by turning it faster is causing this, since the greater pressure of the hot non intercooled air is greater than the gain from cooler air and the attendant pressure drop. In short there's no excess capacity in this blower in a 351 with this head and cam combination as the blower is too small. That would be my guess - and it's only a guess.

6:52 Because fuel curve & timing was the SAME as N.A. IF the timing & fuel had been optimized, the large intercooler would have made more horse power. You were running a N.A. timing & fuel. Need AIR temperature readings 1. Test cell temperature 2. Temp. Out the supercharger 3. Temp. in the intake manifold.

You can run more timing with the intercooler. Also most run ice water through intercoolers. Although I know on engine dyno's 70 degree water is very common.

would love to see a graph of LBS/hr of fuel and LBS/hr of air along with the boost charts to get a better idea of what is happening. I only say this because of a video Gale banks made explaining that boost is just a measure of flow restriction rather than a measure of power potential based on how a higher flowing head with no other changes will register lower boost and usually more power as there is more room to move the air easily. side note: on my post for the 292 yesterday i neglected to mention how much i would love to see a side by side comparison of the big 3 inline 6's (292, Jeep 4.0, Ford 300) as i know all three can make good power and brutal torque

Superchargers have a fix airflow/speed, turbos are tuned by pressure instead of speed.

Right on

Richard, was the link posted for the video, i did not see it. I really would like to see the mentioned video. Like to mention I currently have a 390W with a Vortech in a 86 Mustang while using the stock hood, and no holes cut into the hood either.

Every turn in the system adds restrictions, non intercooler was a straight shot, the intercooler had some 90 degree bends one looked more than 90. The cooler might flow well but the tight turns will kill the flow.

Speaking of inter coolers I’m looking in to building a air to water for a diesel truck could you make a video on sizing of inter coolers and any other info you might have. This is a hard topic to find on the internet as if it’s some kind of big secret.

I think that nice intercooler is nice and can flow 120lbs/min but I bet your boost pressure/push was higher for the 1200hp runs. I think it was around 9-11psi for this one. If the air is twice as dense in the 1200 run it would make sense that this would flow halfish. No? Love the channel kinda wanna do something like this but smaller and pushing some less practical limits lol. Hope I got it. Thanks

I been playing with WMI on my turbo car. Yesterday was 95f. I have a air air intercooler and right after the outlet is a snow performance WMI nozzle size 3. 50/50 mix was seeing charge temps of 73f.

I'm more familiar with aero engines than automotive engines but from what I've read boost=boost. Meaning, regardless of what temperature the charge air is, absolute pressure is what determines how much oxygen there will be in a cylinder. You very quickly reach a limit with either how much boost or how much timing you can give an engine before reaching the limitations of your fuel. Assuming your valve and ignition timing are static, too much boost will lead to premature or unstable combustion, however, reducing the charge temperature can delay these issues until higher manifold pressures. So reducing charge temperature shouldn't increase boost by itself, but it should allow you to run higher boost. So like you were saying with a regulated source like a turbocharger, adding an intercooler between the compressor and bypass valve will result in the same boost and lower charge temperature. But with a supercharger where the impeller speed is fixed, I think you would need to adjust pully size to compensate for the added flow restriction to achieve a similar behavior to that of a turbo.

Comment #2: Richard! Could you do some dry sump testing based on how much vacuum is being drawn in the crank case? Also - any idea how engines like NASCAR are able to handle upwards of 28 inHg, but if I did that on my car I would suck the oil straight out of the bearings?

It's good to see the Edelbrock Power Package deliver as advertised. They claim 410 hp from their 351W kit, and you got a little bit more. And that's on a junkyard short block!

Optimum flash-point for the type of fuel. We found that the ideal temp for 98 octane is 60 degrees celcius.

Happen to remember by chance what blower that kit uses? V1-S? And what was the crank pulley size?

What this looks like is an on the edge timing map for non intercooler vers a conservative timing map intercooled. I put money on it that if you add a degree or 3 above 4500 rpm the power would reflect gains. Also the non intercooler engine would have a failure rate much quicker then intercooled. If given testing back to back in a car on a 85^ day the non intercooler engine would be lazy and get worse as the miles are put in vers the intercooled

Not uncommon in the Mustang world to see 170,180,190,200f on these vortech blowers with boost and no intercooler. These are with real temps under hood heat. I run water meth to help bring it back down to 120-140f. When I’m worried about racing a splash of 100-110 unleaded removes my worry of knock.

Do you have more plumbing to pressurize with the intercooler in place so the boost rise was faster and the temperature did not catch up to the inefficiency

What are your thoughts or have you tested any intake intercoolers like some for the holley hi rams? ( i.e tick performance)

I think and I not an expert by any means. The engine was happy enough with the boost timing and heat before intercooling so not much to be had after especially taking into account the loss of flow/boost.

This video, like your meth injection vs intercooler shows how you are crippling your combos by not taking advantage of the cooling by increasing the timing. Personally, I blame the squirrels.

Id like to add a metric you haven't considered at all. Pressure drop. If you want to see whats really going on with these IC setups you need to measure pressure drop in the charge pipes pre IC and manifold. I bet you 100$ that the boost PSI pre IC is much higher. Adding an IC also increases restriction regardless of the size of the IC. the more pipe and bends you add to the system the more resistance to flow. id also bet the people that design these inter coolers don't take pressure drop into account. Pressure neutral IC's are the only way to go. that means the PSI at the turbo/ supercharger is the same PSI at the TB. Love your videos!

Would love to see non intercooler E85 vs M1 fuel. Measure inlet temps and egt's at say 15-20 pounds of boost. Interested to see how E85 cools combustion vs M1. Methanol should be better, but how much better?

What about charge temp tests on carb vs efi vs intercooler?

Richard, does the inter cool company publish the design approach of cooler. Approach difference between entering water and leaving air. This tells you the efficiency of the heat exchanger and if the water flow throw exchanger is at design or airflow across exchanger is at design.

"You know... the thing"

👐

The pro of intercooler is cooler intake temp hence more timing and less fuel to control EGT generating more Hp. The con is obviously abrupt the air flow. The pro is much important than the con because the con could be easily compensated. Your experiment showed how much Hp loss due to this con, but did not utilized the pro.

Running the supercharger takes power. Back pressure in the output of the supercharger puts more load on it. So running no intercooler reduces the losses to run the supercharger. So you didn't make more power, you made the supercharger run more efficiently. Try running a big air to air and see what happens.

I run a Vortech V3 on my V8 Audi S4. I have run it without an intercooler and then with an A2W intercooler both at 6.5-7 psi of boost pressure. The ECU would pull ignition timing from too much knock after most of a 1/4 mile dragstrip pass when running without an intercooler. With an intercooler I can keep the IATs down and not see any ignition timing pull. It seems like this 351 W isn't knock limited.

Obviously the cooler temp did not increase enough oxygen to overcome the restriction. On a turbo with much higher charge temp, probably would be an increase. Would be interesting to see differential pressure fore and aft of heat exchanger. Blow through carb cools the charge. I like meth injection. Now turn it up till it blows!

Maybe intercoolers aren't as important / effective at boost levels under 15psi, especially in short burst situations (drag racing). A cool test would be tesing for knock at different IAT levels, with different fuels, and different boost levels.

The piping losses might have really been high. Need to data log pressure out of supercharger and in manifold to determine the actual drop due to restrictions.

If fuel was the same and lowering inlet temps gave you more pounds of air per hour then you needed to add more fuel to see an increase in power. That assumes the cooler provided a denser air charge at the same air velocity. That and you may need to use an even smaller pulley. The turbo can not catch up to make up the pressure loss from the contracting air when cooled. As an exhaust driven turbo might. What was the AF ratio with and without coolers, were you leaner with the coolers?

I would say it is probably because it mixes the gas better

Richard . I know this is beyond late , and may have been brought up, but what if you took the same set up and added ONLY methanol?

I feel you limited the intercooler applications because you didnt adjust the tune at all between the tests. Isnt that the benefit of the intercooler? Cooler air so you can run more timing and less fuel. If you take that out its mostly an airflow restriction. Hmmm.

I feel like if you don't adjust timing and fuel and run ice water through intercooler you won't have a gain especially on a supercharger setup because you're just adding a restriction and decreasing potential boost

Do you ever tested a difference in charge air temps using a injector on the pipe? Like those water methanol kits, or even a fuel injector.

Maybe I missed a past video that explains this but can we talk about how to use an intercooler on a everyday vehicle situation? Like say they typical guy running a 800hp turbo LS. Do you suggest water to air, air to air? Does the fact some of us live in Texas where the temperature might be 105 on a normal summer day make a difference?

Could it be that the potential to run more timing with the properly sized intercooler was not taken advantage of, in addition to the restriction of the intercooler itself? Consider the following extremes: 1. An NA setup with and without an intercooler. I'm going to guess the Intercooled setup will always make slightly less power. 2. Running 91 AKI in an engine tuned to 87AKI. The potential for more power is there but not realised.

I have only one question, what type of fuel were you using ?, I don't see volume problems what I believe is ( doesn't mean it is a right believe ) that K-energy in the fuel is important, but there is a limit to it before you start entering in to detonation, in the NO intercooled test you just had not reached the K-energy threshold for detonation there for it was the best charge at that amount of boost, you want the most energy in that mix before you reach the threshold of the mix and enter in detonation, heat is energy up to the point that you enter in detonation, if you had a Higher compression engine then you will see that the Intercooler will be beneficial because you already got to the threshold of the K-energy quicker, then you want to cool the charge to be able to avoid the detonation, as well if you added more boost then you will see that the NO intercooled application will reach the K-energy threshold and you are limited to timing, and there is where the aftercooler will be beneficial. Changing a little the topic of cooled charge, do you have test comparisons of Carbureted supercharged engine NO intercooled vs EFI NO intercooled, to see how far can you run a carbureted engine before needing a aftercooler since the charge is cooled as it mix with the fuel and you have sort of J-Thompson effect going thru it, and how far you can run a EFI before you need a intercooler.

Back pressure and angles

It sounds to me that you didn't maximize the tune the changes (especially timing). The cooler air charge temps should have allowed more timing. Also it could have be overly lean/rich which would have killed power.

would have been interesting to see a super overkill intercooler to see if it can ever really be too big

Mr. Pedantic checking in! Technically any charge air cooler that comes after your compressor(s) is an "aftercooler". It's technically only an intercooler if it's between two charge air devices (ie. between two turbochargers or between a turbo charger and a super charger

Something wrong with that 351, is it the same one with the 2 turbos?

I'm thinking that supercharger couldn't push more. It wasn't making more power because it wasn't efficiently putting air in. My bet is go to a bigger charger, intercooled would make more, even at the same boost because it won't heat the charge as much.

PSI of boost is almost a worthless number. Manifold air density is what matters to the road and the dyno. More intercooler is always a good thing. (Unless it's a terrible intercooler lol)

less pressure in the plenum and the cfm loss from the air having to turn?

I have a 91 E350 1-ton box van with a 351W and, surprisingly (to me), a C6. Will my 351 have a roller cam? Forged pistons?

EGT? AFR? Timing? We repeatedly hear on this site how horsepower is complicated; if the tune was the same, the results will be vastly different between these three configurations. Bet that the big cooler was really lean and no cooler was almost too fat. Check out Gale Banks' claims on flow and density versus boost pressure. Good project, though. Looking forward to more.

Now try Non Intercooled with a carb set up....

Hey Richard is there any way you can test if a fuel Inter cooler or fuel cooler work on making more power (ice coolers) for fuel? Does that affect engine performance.... example Mr Gasket fuel cooler 1350 and canton racing fuel cooling tank 80-500 thank you hope you can make this video and keep up the great work

Hey Richard ,what do you think of remote mounted turbos?

The intercooler would have more of an advantage in the car with the hood closed at driving speeds. I understand the logic of the video but an engine in an open dyno room and the engine in the car with the hood closed is way 2 different scenarios

Hey I would like to know where you got the brackets to mount the supercharger ? I called vortac today and they said they do not make any ? thank you

Now with a 4ft coldside pipe in front of the fan like rearmount guys that dont run intercoolers lol

65 aat is good how about cold start 14f stock ecm factory grind daily finding 14psi pump gas

Vid or recommendations on roots style Superchargers?

I'd really love to see MAF data at the beginning of the intake. Any bets the non-ic setup is pulling the most air?

the cooler denser air slows down the flame front.... Which allows you to add more timing to make more power... which you didn't do at all... So you didn't change timing to take advantage of the cooler denser air.... And you also had less boost overall... You didnt do a proper and equal test So even without any tuning changes.. it made the same power on less boost... That means its making more power with the intercooler

Mismatched parts and poor control of some variables combined with no apparent timing adjustments?