hey
have this plan thats coming a reality for turboing my bus using a 48 side draught weber thats in the USA at the moment soon to come to aussie and am interested to know peoples idea's for a place for the intercooler on a kombi?
i was thinkin of the engine lid area but am unsure on it getting enough air there, then theres around the gearbox area which starts to get bit further away from turbo
anyway tell me your ideas
cheers
rhys

The black bus at Valla with the 13B turbo had the intercooler across the engine lid (the back one, not the top one) with a cut out covered by mesh.

yer
thought of that but was thinking of making up a sort of engine lid that isnt hinged and have it grafted into it but then that cuts off the access to the engine bay except for above?!??
cheers
rhys

There's a 70's kombi running around near me with a Nissan 1800 in it. :puke

What I found interesting was the fact that rather than mount the radiator at the front, or across the engine lid, he had mounted it in the side near the spare-wheel well, with a thermo fan on the inside, and louvres cut into the quarter panel.

I can't see why this wouldn't work for an intercooler, and you could cut louvres to look like the low-louvre split kombis.... :thumb

ahahahahaa i was also thinkin in the spare battery department and use the air coming in from the vents?????
cheers
rhys
p.s. i know this all depends on the size of intercooler etc

Are you planning on a draw through set up ?

kombi_kid

Check this out
http://www.autospeed.com/A_1838/cms/article.html 

An article with suggestions on how to improve the efficency of an air to air intercoolers, with fans/ ducting etc- its DIY budget oriented

CU
Jeremy

im going the pull through design that is the carby before the turbo
cheers
rhys
p.s. thanks jeza

Hi

You cant run an intercooler after the carb, it will fill with fuel and go bang. You can only go blow through. Carbies are for suckers anyway. Amazer (all hail turbo god) had his mounted like Col suggested on the Hellbus.

Steve

ok steve u got me there but do u think and intercooler is neccessary for a turbo only running around 7 PSI boost?
cheers
rhys

No. And intercoolers with carbies are LETHAL

you could alweays run a water/methonol injection setup to prevent det

Rhys,

Have a look over on shoptalkforums.com in the Forced Induction forum. It has lots of useful advice on blow thru setups. For Blow thru you should look at ducting air from the side vents into the carby, along with a water/metanol injection setup that switches on when your on boost (a carby jet, pressure switch on the boost side of the turbo, and a washer windscreen bottle will be enough.

Get a copy of Turbomania (I think primate is selling a few copies) as it has lots of valuable info.

Also look at lowbugget.com and http://www.locashracing.org/ 

Cheers

Steve

yer steve got a copy of turbomania off ali thats what inspired me for this!!and thought of that water/alcohol injection system!!! so what boost can be run without an intercooler safely???
cheers
rhys

kombi_kid

Amount of boost without an intercooler depends on so many things.... its a bit hard to give an absolute figure. Mostly the compression ratio of the engine but all the other factors such as air temps etc can be forgotten.

The thing to remember is that you're unlikely to be on max boost for long periods of time, so you could use your water/ alcohol injection for those periods of max boost.

I also got a copy of Turbo mania recently and would have to say its a bit like a jumbled collection of magazine articles. There is very good info in there but some of it is dated and very controversial. I recommend tracking down a copy of Turbochargers by Hugh MacInnes. A friend lent me a copy of this and it is brilliant. The author has also owned a Corvair and dealt with Turbo charging VW's so there are relavant comments. The book is also written in an ordered fashion for some one who wants to learn!

Also search the forced induction forum on shoptalk forums as some of the guys there are very knowledgable.

Cheers
Jeremy

Hi

Another good read is Maximum Boost by Corki Bell. In his words "an intercooler is more cake".

Steve

Hey kombi_kid,
thing I keep thinking is, how long before you will want more boost?

I give it a week. Then you will want 10pounds of boost, that's starting to get to intercooler territory.

Sure you don't want to rethink now and go EFI before you get there? That means only spending once, even if it is a few more bucks.

I could be wrong, just a thought

a few more dollars its a bloody shit load more
how can all these guys in america get 10PSI boost in a pull through design and not overheat??
cheers
rhys

I think their not telling you something personally. All the guys I know who used to have draw through set ups always ended their turbo stories with the same sort of sentence...

"it went really well until the head cracked/rings broke/headgasket blew."

Very unhappy and even more expensive. Draw through setups don't last long term generally.

It's ok for the "budget turbo" dude, his car is a dedicated drag car...he doesn't have to drive it everyday. If it blows a motor he just puts it back on the trailer

And theres more. If the car is properly intercooled it actually produces more power for the same boost and puts less stress on the motor. Your motor is less stressed so it lasts longer. So draw through designs are kinda false economy.

As for money, I know what you mean, but you have to admit, you get what you pay for. Besides, once the money is spent on the efi, the options for improving the tuning, boost and drivability down the track are better and cheaper.

I know it's not an easy or cheap answer, sorry :o

p.s. you could use a little shot of nitrous as an intercooler...

[Edited on 25-10-2004 by pete wood]

if i where to go down installing efi i would just drop in an EJ20T but i wont to go oldskool!
blowthru is also an option where a intercooler can be used will look into it
cheers
rhys

Rhys
Altho its not aircooled, but I ran my old Pushrod 1600 Capri on 10 Lb of boost drawing thru a 45mm SU for over ten years, no intercooler of course.

I modified my dizzy with a vacuum advance dashpot off a 2 ltr OHC ford dizzy that has a double acting vacuum dashpot that advances and retards and is sprung to center on sero boost/vac. From memory I had it retarding about 6Deg. of ignition on boost above 6Lb

With a bit of ingenuity you can add the same setup to a dizzy to retard timing on boost if necessary. Mine retarded ignition over 6psi and the engine ran just fine on that setup and I boosted it occasionally to 12Lb and it still ran fine without an intercooler.

The 45mm SU is a snap to fit and dead easy to tune. Start with a BCA needle which are perfectly suitable for turbocharging.
Su's are as cheap as buggery S/H compared to a frigging about with dcoe's. You will never regret it.

Another strategy is to use a pair of either Solex or Weber blow-thru carbs and you can run whatever intercooler setup your heart desires then.

These carbs are ridiculously simple items and closely resemble a kraut carb at first glance and provide extra enrichment on boost.

They are again, surprisingly easy to tune but you will have to hunt around a bit to find them now.
The Webers, by most accounts are the more desireable item but also much rarer and pricier.

You can also blow thru the SU's as well but this is a bit more difficult as SU's require a fair size plenum chamber in front of them to get them to work properly. For whatever reason, attaching the pipe directly into the front of them somehow interferes with the delicate balance of pressures necessry to lift the piston correctly and the engine will develop a flat spot in its response above 1/4 throttle to about 2/3 throttle between about 3 to 5 grand.
I was never able to get on top of this when I went to a blow thru arangement with an SU.

I know blowing thru SU's works well as my SU was a brand new blow thru HIF SU off a pommie Mini Metro Turbo.

The Mini Metro turbo used a single HIF SU (centre float) that was somewhat modified from standard to provide extra boost enrichment.
Anyway, due to space, (and lack of knowledge at the time) the plenum I had in front of the carb was well less that a litre in volume and altho greatly minimising the "hole" in the response, just never quite eliminated it which pissed me off no end!.

It wasnt untill long after I had given up and gone to the Solex that I spent a fair bit of time with Stuart Benson, formerly of Bensons Turbo centre in Sydney, who worded me up on fixing what was a common problem with using SU's at the time and the main reason why tuners gave up on SU's as a blow thru strategy.

The bigger the volume of this plenum the better but you may get away with as little as 1 liter in size. From memory Stuart reccommended a plenum the same size as an air cleaner off an old Holden red motor.
They used to weld up the old Holden filter box and adapt them to the front of the SU and voila!

The Solex blow-thru carb never performed anywhere near the SU in terms of outright performance nor fuel consumption but of course did not have that dratted flat spot in the mid-range so that is what that engine still wears to this day.

Bty: I still have that HIF SU and It will be drawn thru on the turbo 1600 I am building as a fun thing for my F-Vee

Anyway, I hope some of this is useful to you.

L8tr
E

[Edited on 25/10/04 by tassupervee]

I too had a similar problem with a flat spot in my blow through set up (using supercharger tho)- It pissed me off that much that i have redesigned my set up as a draw through using a zenith SU copy side draugh carb untill im ready to mount the injector/throttle body set up im working on.

hey
it seems alot of people are using the pull through design and there havent been many complaints??? the blow thru setup looks a little more complicated but is the same principle in the end!!! im on shoptalkforums know see what these yanks have to say keep the opinions rolling on in very informative!
cheers
rhys

You reckon its hard in a kombi try fitting one in a bug.