Cheap vs expensive chargecooler shootout experiment
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- Опубліковано 20 лип 2024
- side by side testing with my super technical experiment of cheap vs expensive chargecoolers
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I fitted the cheap one to the car today... From driving it around today this deserves another video with real world results.
can you post a link to where on ebay you got this cheap charge cooler?
Hoang Bui that exact one is not on at the minute but if you type universal charge cooler into the search, the first ones that pop up are the same sort of thing
Any update on that? Did it feel as much better as it worked on the bench? :)
@@ArthurTipaldi "Did it feel as much better"? Really dude? How about, "Did you get the same results while driving as you did on the bench test" ?...or something to that effect. I apologize if English is not your first language. =)
what about the boost pressure drop from the larger IC?
Don't apologize about your units! As an American engineering student I despise the crap units we use, they make no sense.
Levi Heizer it's confusing for people here. We seem to have a mix of everything. Measure in mm, drive in miles. Weigh in whatever people feel like at the time 🤔
Yeah we are pretty used to it. As long as,all your prices are in $USD we're good 😂😂😂😂
Levi Heizer Engineering student you say ,well I guess your part of the next group of fuck ups coming down the pipe
In our defense. . . they did give them to us.
Only thing I would have added is air flow.
But a good experiment.
Well done
I think this was a pretty decent bench experiment. I think what we learnt is that the larger the intercooler with direct flow actually works better in addition to the fact that the eBay version probably hold more water in the cooler itself which the air has to even hotter in order to heat. In comparison to the cylindrical version which although has higher air flow, had less water in the system in order to move the heat. This resulted in the temps being much higher. I don’t think it quality that won today. It was definitely quantity and volume. Well done and thank you for the content.
Dude this is the most underrated channel imo. You deserve way more subs and views! Top notch high quality content as always keep it up :)
Let's share it
I think it's a great test. It shows that not all expensive stuff works better then cheap alternatives. I wish that there's a lot more tests like this. Good work.
I had a pwr cylinder and switched to a cheap one like you have. Same results. Much better with a cross flow unit and much less pressure drop to boot.
So, you did it! Can't believe I missed this by a week, I used to come and check almost every day if you made the test video )))
Well done!
Was worried at first, but you kept as many things consistent to have an adequate comparison. Quite surprised at the difference. Great work.
Nice work lee! Was worth testing them out for sure!!!
Astonished, how effiecient a water - air intercooler could be!😍 Very nice experiment!
top vid thanks for sharing, i was looking to buy a avt chargercooler but after seeing this i will be looking for something different , my only concern with the cheaper ones is the boost pressure they can handle, but have found frozenboost do some that have been tested to 170psi
Hi Lee ,
I have only just found your channel,
it is very good, and you have a nice unit to work in,
I only have a volvo s60 D5 now , but like all cars
when testing both intercoolers /charge cooler, with the large one have you tested the pressure drop, before the cooler and after,
Thanks for very good videos,
where about in the uk are you based , I am in Emsworth Hampshire,
Dave
Amazing test. Well done.
Ive just been looking at this for my Subaru sti. I think this is better in the top mount position for better turbo spool rather than running a large air to air front mount.
Good experiment!! Thanks for the information
Good video my friend. If you were able to do a split screen of the two temp gauges along with the timer that would be interesting to see.
Great experiment that has proved that the cheaper one works well. My concern now is the pressure drop of the charged air. You mentioned that there was a better flow from the tube cooler..As you have a water to air rad with fans it sound like even if the tube cooler isn't so efficient the rad + fans would cool it sufficiently. I would be concerned about choking the charged air causing a pressure drop.
That Intercooler plus even the most restrictive ones out there will have as much as a 1 psi drop in boost. Definitely not a concern vs the benefits from cold air going into the engine.
Well uve just secured my faith in a cheap charge cooler thats for sure. Great informative vid. Exallent.
Thank You for your efforts. I suppose that pressurized air would likely improve the performance of the ebay cooler. For the love of motorsports, its really great of you to help minimize gimmicks and help keep folks from being unnecessarily parted from their hard earned money.
The reasons you explained about the ebay cooler.
Are exactly why it beats the other.
Physical size and flow.
The ebay items cross sectional area of the core is about 5 times bigger between the 2 coolers.
For both water volume and air volume.
Air 75mm inlet = 4417square mm, spreading out to 300mm by 75mm = 22500 square mm.
The ebay cooler would hold about 1.2litres of water.
The other cooler
Air 75mm inlet = 4417sqare mm right through the length.
Water would be about 550ml.
What about heat capacity they are probably 2 - 3 times different in mass. Maybe they need more time to rich max?
Love this video. I would like to see something like this test on a engine bay temps and putting the engine to some preasure... "track" or something similar.....👍👌
cooling vs flow. A larger cross flow will allow more surface area and a slower air speed thus a better cooling effect. In actual use though this air speed drop may result in a pressure drop or restriction. The barrel style is typically designed for space concerns. As usual the best one is usually the biggest you can fit; brand becomes less important. Good video and I watched it a year ago for the first time and it shaped my purchase of my core
Interesting experiment, I'd have liked to see it over a longer period of time with airflow over the charge cooler rad to make it a bit more real world though 👍
Weld r134 fittings on to it and dump your ac into it . Re route the input from one of the inside cores to it and viola!
I, Lee, appreciate the fact of doing with what ya' got. This is truly how engineering break-throughs from observance and adjust for better, has let MAN become the creature that was intended to keep this rock WELL while it's here. Now we need to keep our sights on the universe, right? Types of energies here vs. there? Differentiation in temps., but not in time?
Even if the CFM wasn't the same on the output on each it does prove the over all cooling was best on the cheap one. Same amount of heat for the same amount of time. On the jack of all trades the cheap one was best in my opinion. I would like to see somebody run this type of system on a cold air intake and see if it works. Just for fun
I think you're a genius!
Well done mate.
At the beginning i thought ebay one was more efficient but...usually i get wrong on this kind of stuff.
Nice job!
Looks like surface area of the alum that the air touches makes all the difference.. id like to see the difference that fin count per inch makes.or if maybe internal/external heat sink type fins make a difference (also with air flow)
Excellent scientific testing
This is a great test. The big difference here I think is gonna be airflow. Id really like to see a pressure drop test done. Its really common to see boost drop several psi through cheap intercoolers so Im curious how these two would compare. Great video.
2 side questions:
1. What brand was the ebay intercooler?
2. What are you using as coolant for the intercooler system?
Cheers, eBay kit was unbranded and I’m using 50% antifreeze the same as my normal Coolant system. 👍
I know it's been a while since your comment: when air temperature drops, so does the pressure. Another good data point is air density. Banks swears density is THE stat to get for high power in his diesel engines.
great test, appreciate the information
Its the size of the cross section of the cooler. I am going to get one of those cheap coolers but BTW they can be had for 80 sterling.... or 120$
The small one is floored by design that are too straight through, boost/charge air doesn’t spend enough time travelling through it to transfer heat into the water that’s why they only tend to be rated for around 200-250hp
It's simple dinamics more cooling mass less heat, u have an high flow chargecooler whit a lower mass and u have a cheap massive chargecooler it can cool a lot more but the flow its more restrictive and that foil in the slim charger cooler it prevents the cooler from eradiate heat and cool better
Check the inlets temps runing both on the car in real conditions. Im not surprised with the result on the ebay one. I guess it all boils down to surface area available. You might get a bit of extra restriction with the cheap one but the inlet temps far outweight that.
Great video editing skills there.
I hope you piped up the barrel chargecooler the right way round? Cold water in towards outlet side.
Thank you for sharing this info
What pump did you use?
And how big is your aluminium radiator??
My chargecooler on my Mr2 is from eBay. It puts out temperatures around the same as your eBay cooler. I had an HKS one and it put out around 35-50 degrees Celsius and my eBay one was around 24-31 degrees
Alex Johansson sounds like it's definitely worth me trying this on the car
Amazing video and info
Thank you so much
Great video mate
keep up the good work.
Fairouz Yousof cheers mate
Can you make a video of how you routed your water to air cooler
I'd like to see these real world results. I ran a barrel charger on mine and it performed very well. In the midst of upgrading to more boost and I'm debating ditching the barrel cooler for the big boy. I feel like the barrel cooler may heat soak faster but mine rarely got hot during spirited canyon runs.
travaggini my barrel charger was really good and worked great up to about 10 psi boost. I think I've just pushed it a little past what it can cope with. I've had the eBay one on all weekend so hopefully I will get time to do an update video later today.
Awesome video!!!
Tx mate. Great video
Cool idea. I think though that the hot air isn’t getting through the larger cooler. IE, it’s heating up the first part and it’s not making it through to the other end as there isn’t enough cfm from the hot air gun.
Steve yeah it doesn’t move massive amounts of air. But the intake was sealed, so if the air goes in it must come out.
easy test to check that theory. stop the water flow and the air at the exit should get hotter
It’s simples the avt is a straight laminar flow of air there’s nothing to delay its passage over the cooling surface on the avt so you will get a high flow of air down side it’s not cooling the charge, the cheap eBay one has a more diruptive design as the air try’s to bend it slows down plus it has an increased area to desipate the heat over so thermodynamics come into play, in the real world you want to not impede the airflow but also cool the charge down unless you carry a fridge cooling system or peltierheat exchange it’s going to be hard to do both.
You are correct but does this matter as much for a turbod car as the air is pressurised through the intercooler so must negate some of the effect of changing direction and I'm guessing will gain more power in cooling than a small restriction.
But as his test does not use pressurised air you are correct that the results are not conclusive and the small restriction would play a huge part in cooling. If he used pressurised charge air the results may be totally different.
Thank you. Fascinating. I guess the only thing then is to see if it does cause an air pressure drop and reduced power. Also if either suffer from heat soak. Also can you post a link to the eBay cooler that you used.
adriangale I fitted it today, I can say it definitely does not suffer from pressure drop or reduced power. Quite the opposite. I will do another video on this. I can’t find it on eBay now, but just search universal chargecooler, different variations appear
I think you should do the same test with a fmic, even with no airflow through the fins. I think you will find the results will be better again.Not because it's better at cooling, but because of its physical size and the amount of surface area and the low pressure of the heat gun I don't think the sensor will hardly move.
In fact I think even if you did the same test again with no cooler st all but with a 1m length of pipe on the gun you will find a surprising drop in the air temps. You think with just a straight pipe the air coming out the other side will be 250+ degrees? Test it and find out
The front mount air to air will be worse.
Much larger volume of air to boost.
Pressure drop will be higher.
Boost lag will be gauranteed.
An air to air cannot reduce the temps anywhere near as efficiently as an air/water system.
If one was willing to install an ice box they could get the air even cooler still.
Only problem I see with the test is that the eBay intercooler was only half full of water due to inlet and outlet fitting location. To fully fill the fluid portion of the intercooler, the supply fitting should be at the bottom and the return fitting up at the top. Without doing that, the top half of the core wasn’t even cooling the hot air.
There is a direct correlation in flow rate and pressure. A big pressure number does not mean a good flow rate of air into the engine. Think of how to do more with less. As in less restrictive intercoolers. Less restriction means more flow and low heat as well as more horse power per pound of pressure.
Hey Spyder
i know this was done long ago, but just saw it
i like your channel
it'd be interesting to test pressure/weld quality limits on both (controlled/safe of course) wouldn't it?
it would totally suck for a fracture to put water into your motor in high boost pressure situations hahaha
I have a W2A setup on my car and the heat exchanger is very tiny and i dont have a header tank. I intend on getting one and upgrading my heat exchanger. What size header tank is yours? the capacity and what heat exchanger size is yours? you using 2 sets of fans for the heat exchanger right?
Excellent data.
Looks good. Thank you 👍
From the looks of it, the air flow characteristics of the Ebay cooler should take more of a diagonal path from the inlet to the outlet instead of directly across. If that's the case, then the "cooled" surface area inside should be a similar amount. The ebay one looks to add turbulence to the flow though which could protect the thermocouple from seeing the full blast of heat from the gun. I think when you start to turn the pressure up, more heated air will see the thermocouple and the temp difference will even out. I'd run the same boost with each and test on the road with a IAT reading
the only problem with you're theory, is that the Fins inside go Directly across, not diagonally...
True, don't know what I was smoking when I wrote that! The more important point I was trying to make was the turbulence/obstacles blocking the heat from getting to the thermocouple.
I was thinking the same.
That ebay one is pretty good, With my front mount on my skyline i usually see temps of around 30 degrees on normal driving and up to 45 degree when i'm flooring it and thats a HKS job that cost £1100.
Project Mr-s yeah the avt usually sits around 30 until the last 1k or so of revs and shoots up quite a bit
Air to air is not even close to being comparqble to air to water.
I have run both...I will not go back to air to air!
That seems like an ok test. My only critique is you're not trying to cool compressed air. The thermal dynamics of compressed gasses at different pressures varies greatly.
I would call it a comparison rather than a test. Its far from real world but, All the factors were constant. The only change was the chargecooler. With the thermal dynamics, the only thing that really changes at different pressures are temperature and volume.
Assuming your heat gun can handle it, do a 5 minute test or whatever so that you can see at what point the temperature stays steady on both the charge coolers. While one will cool more, would be nice to know how much cooling you got with each cooler. What you’re charge cooler options are will depend on your car. I have a 95 trans am with a rear mounted turbo system, already had an air/air intercooler mounted in front.
Car isn’t running right now, but I have considered putting a “Barrel type” cool charger (it would fit) on the pipe that runs underneath my car.
That would cool air before it even hit my air/air intercooler. I have seen “Barrel Type” Cool Chargers on E Bay for 100 to 130 USD..
If I go with the charge cooler, may consider upgrading it to an “inter chiller” where instead of running coolant, I would use the A/C system, this potentially would allow more temperature reductions compared to water.
youre the best! now i buy this chargecooler
great video!
The thing that you need to be measuring is the TIME per degree, (which you are sorta doing),
but your air flow is barely at idle levels, there's a massive increase in flow under full boost.
The winner can be gleened by simply the weight difference between the two coolers,
(that's aluminum PLUS water weight), this will determine the rate of temperature rise every time.
Also, the total weight of the circulating water, and surface area and air flow through
the heat exchanger, (radiator), plus the weight of aluminum in the heat exchanger.
Water can absorb a tremendous amount of heat, the more you have in the system
the slower the temperature will increase, OR, decrease.
Can agree to a point. Obviously less than idle flow here. However this experiment should scale accordingly.
The avt one is tiny compared to that ebay one though. Need to have two with similar sized cores. What size was the avt one?
What does everyone think of the results? I am not totally convinced by this test so I will do another video on the car with data logging for a real world comparison. And I know .... I kept calling it avg instead of avt doh
SpyderLEE this was the same results I had seen in a similar test. It's the amount of air that can get cooled at the same time that matters over the longevity of cooling through out the tube. Glad you did the experiment though. I thought it was interesting that so many people automatically assumed the tube style cooler were better. In my opinion if this was the case even radiators would be designed differently.
Track King yeah I’m glad too... just need to change around all my engine bay again now 😞
Before you change it put an air temp sensor in after the chargecooler do you get an accurate comparison at actual boost pressure. I don't think your test shows a very accurate result at all.testing on the car will provide the real results
huntos83 yeah I’ve got intake temp sensor between the charge cooler and the throttlebody. a hot air gun is a long way from a turbo but there was some interesting results.
Interesting, but I would say misleading and not accurate. I just don't think this test represents the real scenario
Test on the car will provide real results
What radiator do you use along side it
5 seconds into your video, and I had to thumbs up. Entertaining. Keep sciencing
Cheers probably not the most accurate sciencing but meh 😂
Top video. More please.
It’s the design it’s a better cooling design but as you said more resistance
Great test. I would had loved to see a 3rd gen 3sgte st205 core done in this test as well.
The 205 and 185RC chargecoolers are *very* good. Only their placement lets them down.
@@jamesbuckle6077 how good is what I’d like to know for sure. I’d like to see how they cool in stock condition, then seeing pump flow rate and how that can be improved with a larger heat exchanger. I considered doing it but after all the costs I can just get a nice Garrett intercooler setup for my alltrac. I am going to try and get some basic reading off my 205 ic before I make any changes.
@@cmsgt4
yes, would be nice to see some numbers! To be fair I converted from an ATA to a WTA and at the same time dropped in a 100% duty pump, and the radiator I used was the main engine radiator from an Audi 100, which is a tiny bit smaller but thicker than the stock 185 engine rad. I had no cooling issues, I had 40C exit temp at full boost (18psi) maximum.
Heat soaked into larger intercooler will always take longer to heat soak and therefore it must be run over longer time and then look at recovery times .
Nice watch, I have the same one.
Great video
your experiment is about thermal mass.
also the weight of metal part of each cooler is very important thing.
also the weight of water inside each cooler is very important thing.
How much water are you using in your chargecooler setup ?
On the eBay one... Does the water go through the tubes or does the air go through the tubes?
I wish you would have run the test longer, the ebay cooler has so much mass of aluminum that in a 1&2 minute test the mass of aluminum itself without water flow would absorb lots of heat. A 30 minute test would be much better to let the ebay cooler get fully heat soaked. Otherwise great test and thanks for taking the time & effort to share test with us
Great Video
The Cheaper one is acting like a large heatsink and the airflow from the heat gun is probably to small to saturate the amount of aluminum area. If you had large amounts of airflow, the test would be more conclusive.
nice mr2 spyder, man
Thats impressive. But we dont all have the space for the big one! Road logs please!
Nice test! Tbh you can expect half the performance from the expensive intercooler because its half the size. But even then the difference is enourmous. The water direction versus temperature is not so important if you have enough flow. Makes for a good marketing story though :-)
That's about what I expected bigger is better maybe less air flow but probably not a big deal
Im sure the "expensive" one ive seen regularly on ebay for about £90-£100, so is actually the cheap one
what is your opinion after 4 years? still working well?
aaaah, a 250DegC differential in air temp is a massive success. When are you ever going to see intake temps like that? Never, that's when!
What water did u use?
Airflow in CFM on the Output, Should have been included... If you're getting 500 CFM out of the Little one, and only 100 CFM out of the Ebay one... that kinda kills all the good, that the cold air Provides.
John Caprai I was going on the assumption that what goes in must come out. I will try it on the car for a proper real world test
Found this helpful
That's really interesting. It would be interesting to also measure the cfm somehow. A cheap wind speed meter might give the same idea perhaps?
Did the heat gun sound more stressed when it was through the eBay cooler?
Patrick den Oudsten no, it sounded the same. The gun doesn’t move massive amounts of air, but the end was sealed on both so the same volume of air passed though both charge coolers.
SpyderLEE that clears that up then. EBay charger it is!
Patrick den Oudsten I’m going to try it on the car, see what it’s like with some proper volume going through it. 👍
I thought the ebay cooler would need a bleed screw at the top to make it even more efficient.
I am not a boffin on this - but I think the big thing is you have left out the manifold pressure - you ( I assume) have tested the ability of the unit to transfer heat only - and we know that the issue with intercoolers or the need for intercoolers is a function of the compression of the intake charge. And there is a horrid set of maths -that relate to P=MST and P1V1= P2V2. so without the manifold pressure( push back if you will) the test you have undertaken is not at all representative of actual on vehicle conditions. We have little or no latent heat, we have little or no heat soak ( which is actually the cause of most of the pain in the first instance) and we have no pressure in the against the discharge of the heated air. Again effecting the ability to transfer heat. Curiously the better quality unit gets the water much hotter much quicker - which when you think about it speaks to the efficiency of it to conduct the heat away. where as the el cheapo unit seems not to follow the laws of physics. Quite sure the bright guy in my class room - the one that used to each the clag glue would be able to explain it too us. In the meantime - I humbly suggest the abscence of any resistance (pressure) detracts from the actual experiment.
The size, density and flow of the cheap one is better period.
Thermal mass?
I have a question. Can you answer it? Can it be used in a car with a supercharger? Remove the air intake and put this cooler??
The smaller name brand one was clearly insulated with foil. Of course I'd expect higher temps. Thats literally how u cook chicken in the oven. 😄
The avt barrel cooler is tape insulated (?) - which is great for engine bay but not for this test. The cheap one is not insulated and has a large thermal contact area with the bench. I don't understand how the coolers can be above the open header tank. Presume you bled the coolers in particular the avg one as the outlets on the side. I think flow is the main issue so a low flow hot air gun through the cheapo one I would expect to perform better due to the thermal path that has to be followed. Not sure what water pump you are using but my Bosch pump would squirt water everywhere with that set up (open tank and no clips on hose). What are the so called ratings for each cooler - the barrel one looks to be power rated lower? I think the cheapo one has quite poor cooling internals (flat weave) whereas the avg one has proper finned fins for a greater surface area. I appreciate your efforts.
Wouldn't matter if the larger one was insulated. The results would be the same.
The more exoensive unit is a smaller packahe and what it sacrifices jn sizes shows up in poor efficiency.
The onlu difference wiuld be the larger unit will yield about 1 lb of boost drio where the smaller one will only be around .2.
Who cares if it doesn't do what it is designed to do!
You recommend this for 3sgte aw11 300 or 350 hp?
Any intercooler is better than nothing I use one similar on my aw11 turbo racecar and pipe the water through the air conditioning radiator as I took off the air con unit it works great. I dont think it works as great as an air to air but in a mid engine it's hard to get a spot where air can flow enough to cool the air to air intercooler.
good job
I don't think it's a particularly good test, the test condition does not reflect the operating environment, all it shows is a large heat sink Vs a smaller one, those temperatures may not necessarily reflect how it will perform in a car under a closed bonnet for hours, and if the temperatures were good enough on the smaller one for detonation to not be an issue, then would the flow sacrifice be worth it?
mikegt4dude I am still not convinced the cheap one will be better under real world conditions. But I will try it on the car to see. I will see if there is a air flow restriction as my boost controller works on wastgate percentage rather than target boost pressure. I will see what it boosts at
Have you got wideband with data acquisition? You should see your tune go rich with reduced airflow and lean with increased, inlet, outlet and ambient (engine bay) temp sensors would be ideal.
mikegt4dude yeah, wideband and inlet(throttle body) temps are plumbed into ECU, so can log everything. See what it does