Massive single or dual intercoolers?

[madmax]

Hey everyone,



I just talked to my turbo guy and he said me might want to run two smaller intercoolers rather than one massive one. It might take a little more time to plumb, but, whatever. Is there a place on a '69 Camaro where they would get a pretty decent amount of airflow? I am no expert on anything other than a '69 (haven't been around them as much), but didn't the '68 have two holes in the lower valence? That would be a great place to mount them. Where could I do this with a '69?

Max

[ProTeal55]

I am no-where near a turbo authority , But I will throw in my 2cents on this one..:icon996:

My buddy had a 1996 Formula , with a wicked Procharged small block , and he did TONS of research on intercoolers. He was racing the car professionally , so every waking minute he had went into making the car faster, and more efficent.

His base kit from Procharger came with two decent sized intercoolers. It was a bitch to install, but looked sweet with the front clip off...That setup worked ok , but when he started to make any decent power , his Air Intake Temps started to get pretty high. On the dyno , the car would break up really bad under decent to high boost, also did it at the high end of the track.

From that , he went to a large single intercooler , and his temps dropped bigtime, and picked up power. The car made smooth power all the way up to redline, without any issue.So , I would say stuff the biggest intercooler you can in the front of the car and be done with it.

With running two intercoolers , the air comming out of intercooler #1 gets heated up going thru the extra piping , thus making intercooler #2 have less of an effect. One large intercooler does the job much better.

That's my 2cents......

[pushrod243]

I could see using two intercoolers on a twin setup with seperate coolers for each turbo then plumbing together after the coolers. I think space is one of the bigger issues. Corky Bell's book has some good intercoller theories. Still working mine out in my garage but i am leaning towards one big on for my twin turbo setup.

[calereeves]

On my 78 T/A, I'm going to be using two air to water units. I simply don't have the room to mount two air to airs, and I don't want to mounts one HUGE air to air in front of the radiator since the car will see a few very long trips. I'm trying to do whatever it takes to keep the engine temps down on long drives. I figured that two sizeable air-air units would keep me cool, until I discovered that right where I wanted to mount them is right where the frame rails come through the core support! So now I'm going to go with two air to water units that fit in the area above the frame rails in the core support. I'll probably mount the heat exchangers horizontally in front of the engine with a scoop to force air up through them.

[madmax]

Thanks for the ideas guys. I may end up going with one big one. I think two separate dcent sized air-to-airs should do the trick (not placed directly side by side or behind one another).

[ProTeal55]

My buddy ended up spacing the intercooler about 2'' in front of the radiator. We then took his stock lower rad. "flapper" and made it so it would force the air under the car directly to the radiator. The intercooler got most of it's air tru the factory foglight holes.

This was when the car had a stock front clip/bodywork on it, and was still drove ont he street. He now is running a modified trans-am front end , which allows more air to get to the intercooler...

[victionone]

I wouldn't even consider doing twin intercoolers unless you were dong a twin turbo setup, with twin throttle bodies. But even so, I would still definitely run one top to bottom intercooler. It will be cleaner and have less plumbing. If you are running twin throttle bodies, split the intercooler up with two sets of end tanks. With one throttle body, split endtanks for the inlet, and then one big endtank for the outlet.