Interesting observations with FI interchiller last night

[WhipCat]

Went to the track with Marc and his wife yesterday.

Marc went from his one house in west coast of florida to his other house in the keys to pick up his wife’s redeye so they could meet up with me at a rental we got the scoop on that same morning yesterday. Badass.

Anyways, I’ve been 100% work mode for the past couple months and since the other forum took a shit, I’ve been just working my balls off lately. So I wasn’t changing my drag tires at all. I was too whooped tired so I just showed up with my 20” vossens w/ MT street SS. My car was running my low boost setup daily street tune. I was running a full tank of pump E85 with 5 gallons of VP C85 mixed in.

Drove to the track and was immediately up on the line to make a pass.

Made like 6-7 hits. And was fully consistent 10.1x at 142.xxmph with a 1.77 60’.

My car was spot on consistent. I spun once trying to get the car to stick and get me a 9.99 but the track prep wasn’t crazy.

The observations on the FI interchiller are as so:

The ambient temperature was 88degrees with a DA of 3400. Allot of moisture in the air, it drizzled a little bit earlier in the rental.

The intake air temp was 98 degrees.

The S/C intercooler temp was 78 degrees

These temps are with a hot car at idle, I did not attempt to cool the car down during any passes other than opening the hood between passes with 2-3 of the runs back to back. My car stayed running quite a bit.

These temps are also with drag mode engaged. It did not matter whether the switch was 50/50 or 100 drag mode, the temps would not get any lower. In fact I noticed no real difference between the drag setting for the chiller.

I made a pass and monitored the intake air temp. When I was at the double yellow ready to launch we were at 98 degrees. When the pass ended it climbed to 127 degrees.

Which is really good for my car considering I was typically finishing around 160-205 degrees prior. My goal was 130 degrees or less. So we are doing nice right now.

This is the pretty neat obervation. The S/C intercooler temps were at 78 degrees at the start of the pass. At the end of the pass it stayed exactly the same 78 degrees! Can you believe that, not one degree more. I watched it the whole pass. The temp of fluid at the sensor right by the blower was reading 78 degrees. That 78 degree fluid stayed constant the entire pass. That’s pretty cool.

NOW...as I slowed down at the end of the pass I noticed the temperature start to increase. It started to go above 80, then as I made the u turn at the end of the strip to come back it kept climbing. It got to 93 degrees before it stopped, then started to come back down and work it’s way back to 78 degrees at idle in the pits.

Sooo. I think. The large 5 gallon reservoir in my trunk was holding enough 78 degree fluid that it had enough for the entire 1/4 mile pass and then enough for me to make the u turn at the end of the pass which takes me about 7-8 seconds, by the end of that time it only went up 5 degrees. After another 4-6 seconds it climbed another 10 degrees, which means it was finally out of chilled fluid.

So a 10 second pass plus 11-14 seconds after the run the temp only went to 93 degrees.

Let’s say 20 seconds of cold fluid delivery continuously. That is a serious pull. That means for my upcoming half mile I should be able to validate this and see. I can finish a half in 17-22 seconds depending on conditions. So it’s a perfect test, and it’s the max capacity I need.

After looking at the trunk area I think there is room for improvement, I need to insulate the ice tank, I bet I can get the net temps down another 8-10 degrees. That will boost all the stats I explained above. From IAT to intercooler temp.

First time out since the new round of mods and the new transmission as well. I was mostly just having fun and testing the chiller.

 

[WhipCat]

Another goal is to get less fluid with the same 20 second chilled fluid delivery.

If I can drop 2 gallons of fluid I bet the system responds dramatically better and becomes way more efficient. The large reservoir I have gives me a safe stable temp that is protected by all the other engine components generating heat. Obviously there is a limit to how much fluid I have in the tank and by taking to much out it may chill to a super low temp but as soon as the WOT pull comes the heat will overtake that smaller capacity of fluid and cause the heat spike much earlier. This is the same problem I had with ice, if you didn’t get to the line in time the ice would melt and you would get the crazy heat spike during your pass and lose all that sweet power on the top end. So your cars on kill mode but on the top end of the track it dies and you run as fast as before with less boost.

I need to play around with the fluid capacities and find the perfect balance. There might even be a better balance to use for 1/4 and 1/2 mile.

A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds so the lighter be better for the 1/4 mile. And I only need 8 seconds of cold fluid....

 

[Deebeezie]

Great write up! Look forward to your further observations and assessments.

 

[zhc]

My small 1.25 gallon (by comparison) reservoir tank will almost last me a whole 9 second pass. In my logs, I’ll see ICT start ticking upwards as I’m crossing the strips. If I could do it over, I would have fabricated a 1.5 gallon tank instead for the 1/4 mile racing I do. More capacity is definitely useful for longer runs like at a half mile or full mile event. It should just be a 1:1 ratio in needed capacity versus time spent at WOT.

 

[Beast707]

Welcome Back Man. Good hearing your input on that Badass ride.

 

[Marc0779]

Went to the track with Marc and his wife yesterday.

Marc went from his one house in west coast of florida to his other house in the keys to pick up his wife’s redeye so they could meet up with me at a rental we got the scoop on that same morning yesterday. Badass.

Anyways, I’ve been 100% work mode for the past couple months and since the other forum took a shit, I’ve been just working my balls off lately. So I wasn’t changing my drag tires at all. I was too whooped tired so I just showed up with my 20” vossens w/ MT street SS. My car was running my low boost setup daily street tune. I was running a full tank of pump E85 with 5 gallons of VP C85 mixed in.

Drove to the track and was immediately up on the line to make a pass.

Made like 6-7 hits. And was fully consistent 10.1x at 142.xxmph with a 1.77 60’.

My car was spot on consistent. I spun once trying to get the car to stick and get me a 9.99 but the track prep wasn’t crazy.

The observations on the FI interchiller are as so:

The ambient temperature was 88degrees with a DA of 3400. Allot of moisture in the air, it drizzled a little bit earlier in the rental.

The intake air temp was 98 degrees.

The S/C intercooler temp was 78 degrees

These temps are with a hot car at idle, I did not attempt to cool the car down during any passes other than opening the hood between passes with 2-3 of the runs back to back. My car stayed running quite a bit.

These temps are also with drag mode engaged. It did not matter whether the switch was 50/50 or 100 drag mode, the temps would not get any lower. In fact I noticed no real difference between the drag setting for the chiller.

I made a pass and monitored the intake air temp. When I was at the double yellow ready to launch we were at 98 degrees. When the pass ended it climbed to 127 degrees.

Which is really good for my car considering I was typically finishing around 160-205 degrees prior. My goal was 130 degrees or less. So we are doing nice right now.

This is the pretty neat obervation. The S/C intercooler temps were at 78 degrees at the start of the pass. At the end of the pass it stayed exactly the same 78 degrees! Can you believe that, not one degree more. I watched it the whole pass. The temp of fluid at the sensor right by the blower was reading 78 degrees. That 78 degree fluid stayed constant the entire pass. That’s pretty cool.

NOW...as I slowed down at the end of the pass I noticed the temperature start to increase. It started to go above 80, then as I made the u turn at the end of the strip to come back it kept climbing. It got to 93 degrees before it stopped, then started to come back down and work it’s way back to 78 degrees at idle in the pits.

Sooo. I think. The large 5 gallon reservoir in my trunk was holding enough 78 degree fluid that it had enough for the entire 1/4 mile pass and then enough for me to make the u turn at the end of the pass which takes me about 7-8 seconds, by the end of that time it only went up 5 degrees. After another 4-6 seconds it climbed another 10 degrees, which means it was finally out of chilled fluid.

So a 10 second pass plus 11-14 seconds after the run the temp only went to 93 degrees.

Let’s say 20 seconds of cold fluid delivery continuously. That is a serious pull. That means for my upcoming half mile I should be able to validate this and see. I can finish a half in 17-22 seconds depending on conditions. So it’s a perfect test, and it’s the max capacity I need.

After looking at the trunk area I think there is room for improvement, I need to insulate the ice tank, I bet I can get the net temps down another 8-10 degrees. That will boost all the stats I explained above. From IAT to intercooler temp.

First time out since the new round of mods and the new transmission as well. I was mostly just having fun and testing the chiller.

Its about time you started posting here we need more of this tech input,fun nite running with you i think that chiller is working well wait till winter we will be flying, with the water vapor that nite da was actually worse so our times were pretty good

 

[Go Goody]

wish I had known....Would have come down to check things out!

 

[Hickster]

Did the temp start to drop do to a fan kicking on and off?? Believe it or not, probably not, but you can over size the fluid container to the point it will work against ya. You are correct on playing around with the quantiles. There could be too much to wear it will not taking the heat out of the engine. The attempt to do is not necessarily cold down the engine but to have the fluid disperse the heat. Actually you can move too much fluid to where the fluid is not circulating at the gpm that is efficiently to take the heat out. It is also possible to pump fluid too fast that want take the heat out. You can build a system that actually works against the attempt you are devising. Keep at it.

 

[Marc W]

WhipCat! Back just in time! Mine is running on the base tune and we are about to get on the dyno. I was about to contact you on how it is going with your chiller. We followed the directions in that simple diagram. The install video was for a Jeep (in their words.. worthless) and they have asked me to see if they have anything else because they’re thinking something needs to be changed. The IC temps at idle in 100+ degree oat are showing 80 degrees and after about 15-20 minutes, that as low as it goes. We were expecting a lot lower than that. That’s with about 5 gallons in the ice tank in the trunk. We have the spacers and blanket and the 4” pulley. Is it possible that it’s right and that’s as low as it’s going to go with these Whipple's? I’m using the basic stage one system in drag mode. Also.... what about NFZ ???? Oct 13. There’s a twin turbo Camaro threatening me that needs his ass spanked!

 

[zhc]

WhipCat! Back just in time! Mine is running on the base tune and we are about to get on the dyno. I was about to contact you on how it is going with your chiller. We followed the directions in that simple diagram. The install video was for a Jeep (in their words.. worthless) and they have asked me to see if they have anything else because they’re thinking something needs to be changed. The IC temps at idle in 100+ degree oat are showing 80 degrees and after about 15-20 minutes, that as low as it goes. We were expecting a lot lower than that. That’s with about 5 gallons in the ice tank in the trunk. We have the spacers and blanket and the 4” pulley. Is it possible that it’s right and that’s as low as it’s going to go with these Whipple's? I’m using the basic stage one system in drag mode. Also.... what about NFZ ???? Oct 13. There’s a twin turbo Camaro threatening me that needs his ass spanked! View attachment 2365

I’m not Whipcat, but I have helped troubleshoot a lot of Killer Chiller (the other brand) installs over the years and typically the most common reasons for IC temps not being as low as expected are:

1) Stock heat exchanger(s) are not bypassed.
2) A/C charge level too high or too low
3) Restriction in supercharger coolant loop somewhere, like a kink or pinched hose
4) Air in SC coolant lines
5) Insufficient pump flow
6) Extremely hot climates causing more load than the chiller can overcome however I don't think this applies to the FInterchiller unit.

With that said, my Whipple setup does see higher ICT then when I had my stock supercharger. I think the big reason for this is the massive size of the intercooler brick plus it's not well insulated from case so it ends up absorbing a lot of extra heat versus the more efficient and smaller HI design.

For comparison, I just came back from a drive. It's 100F outside, and my ICT settled in around 62-64 after the engine bay became nice and toasty. Does it bother me that it's higher than the 30 and 40's I used to see? Not really, because my IATs are nearly identical to what they were before when driving around. This tells me the intercooler is doing it's job and that it's extracting a lot more heat out of the air then the smaller cores in the stock supercharger.

Here are some quick comparisons from the data logs I've collected in similar 90F ambient conditions. The blue line is when I still had the stock supercharger with a 2.50 upper + lower combo with spacers while the purple line is my Whipple with a 4.25 pulley + lower, no spacers. Notice when the ICT starts to climb, it's right around the 9-10 second mark in my passes.



And here were my IATs for the same passes. With the Whipple being purple, it's not that much worst than what I've been able to achieve in the past with the stock supercharger.


I'm quite satisfied with how well my single core Killer Chiller is performing with my Whipple so far. Best of luck to you guys with yours! Hope yall figure it out.

 

[Marc W]

Thanks for your input. There are a couple items on your list that we will have to take a look at. The stock heat exchanger has been removed and there are no kinks in the lines. The pump flow should be sufficient as we are running one of the big 40gpm Davis Craig pumps on the EMP 7 gallon tank in the trunk. One question.... how do you determine what “charge level” works best and how to know when you’ve achieved that. Just trial and error? I know they have a machine they have used to check charge pressure but I have virtually no understanding of any of this so that question is for the tech in the shop that is orchestrating all of this. Next question.... air in the coolant lines. Is this something that just takes care of itself with a little time or is there aggressive bleeding required? At this point I think the first thing we’ll try, to see what happens is to reduce the coolant volume down the just a couple gallons in that tank and watch the temps. Anybody with interchiller experiences that they think might help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[zhc]

One question.... how do you determine what “charge level” works best and how to know when you’ve achieved that. Just trial and error?

I'm not sure what a good starting point is for the FInterchiller but what I do is charge to a level that I know gets me close from having done my own a couple times and then observe both cabin A/C vent temps as well as ICT temps. I'll start adjusting the charge level until I find the minimum ICT. It becomes trial and error at this point. I don't rely on high and low side pressure readings because it can fluxuate a lot based on conditions and what the a/c control module is commanding. We have a variable speed compressor that often times will operate at less than 100% based on a long list of variables. This process can drag out to hit that optimum unless you know exactly how much Freon to add in weight, it's really rare to know this exactly for these chiller setups. On mine, my guess is somewhere around 26-29 oz.

 

[Marc W]

I'm not sure what a good starting point is for the FInterchiller but what I do is charge to a level that I know gets me close from having done my own a couple times and then observe both cabin A/C vent temps as well as ICT temps. I'll start adjusting the charge level until I find the minimum ICT. It becomes trial and error at this point. I don't rely on high and low side pressure readings because it can fluxuate a lot based on conditions and what the a/c control module is commanding. We have a variable speed compressor that often times will operate at less than 100% based on a long list of variables. This process can drag out to hit that optimum unless you know exactly how much Freon to add in weight, it's really rare to know this exactly for these chiller setups. On mine, my guess is somewhere around 26-29 oz.

Ok. Thank you. That should very helpful. Like most shops... this is a first install for one of these. Looks like a fair amount of trial and error to get it dialed in. Sounds like two variables. Freon volume and coolant volume. Maybe start with the coolant and when it’s as good as we can get it... then the Freon (plus or minus) and once we start seeing a change in the right direction, keep going until it stops. Thanks again!

 

[zhc]

Did you guys insulate your lines? It helps for longer runs like to a trunk mounted ice tank but especially around areas with a lot of radiant heat.

 

[Marc W]

Did you guys insulate your lines? It helps for longer runs like to a trunk mounted ice tank but especially around areas with a lot of radiant heat.

No. We’re still bare bones with this thing. Probably after we know it’s working them we’ll cover all the bases. I do have the aluminum ice box completely insulated on the outside.

 

[Hickster]

With using any equipment that is in the line of a heat exchanger, which is what this is, needs a 3 way system. A bypass to keep the coolant to the temp you need. Called a mixing valve with a control system that is not that $$$. If not you will have a full flow of coolant. Look at my former post. If uncontrolled it will run wide open. I would suggest insulating the box with 3/4 inch Armaflex and the coolant lines with 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick closed cell materials,, Armaflex glued in place. This should help.

 

[Hickster]

Not to know everything concerning these systems, but if you have read my posts on the other forum,, you would know I have been working with heavy commercial and industrial chill water systems. 35 years. R, chilled, ice systems, geo thermos. So, I don't know whom you purchased your system from, but that is only a piece of the pie to make it work. This is the reason back in 2017 Camaro beat out every auto out there cause they installed 6 inter coolers. The cooler the engine more H/P. Now when this person from Aulastrlia came out with a sum what idea. I spoke to him being in the industry for years, and he picked my mind. Hoping to have an interest in this, but come to find out. He is selling 1/2 of the system and it want work, correctly, with out the rest. In which he did not explain,, why?? Don't know. But, if it were me and I was going to install this on my car. Would but make my warranty throw up. I would look into some one whom as installed the whole system instead of a piece mill system. To do it right does not cost that much more. Like I said a year ago,, I would run another system off my factory a/c system. May have to run a bit of tubing, heat exchanger under the hood, passenger side and a control system. Forget about the tank, piping, run amunst system, ice,,,, what ice? Got r134 A or better under the hood already. Why reinvent the wheel?

 

[Jack_Toepfer]

@WhipCat - any chance the street tune helped your temps vs the kill tune? I know you've been trying to get the most out of the FI, but if you're trying to track progresss, I just assumed the kill tune would make a bit more heat and the improvements you're seeing are unrelated to any changes you may have made to the system.

 

[Hickster]

Yo Jack,
Hickster here, snot 2 step on tha question at hand but a tune will defanately help. It wood bee like a chiller with out a control system. A stereo wit out a controller. Out of wack. I have needlessly installed chillers, ice storage systems, controls, ice tanks 5,000 gals whore less, recovery insulated or not tanks, heat exchangers, recovery systems two say moe or less, tanks and cold systems need insulation. Axxspitceeally in Fl fer heat, hoomidity, and X factor. I was in da A/C Industry fer 40 years and loved every min u in it of it. Oh 3 way control valves a must and if budget per mitts,, auto valves,, no, no gate valves.