I came up with yet another half baked idea last night after a 12 pack of bud light....

Ok , under the hood on the A/C system there is a accumulator , it gets wicked cold when the A/C system is running ....Its probably the coldest part of the car as its going down the road besides the EVAP core inside the car ...

Why isnt it mounted inside the Intake Airbox ? Why not put that wasted cold to good use instaed of keeping the strut tower from getting lonely ? Seems if you could draw the incoming air into the engine over the accumulator you migth be able to cool it a bit ...A real cold air intake system?

why hasnt anyone done this ?

should i give up drinking ?

I came up with yet another half baked idea last night after a 12 pack of bud light....

Ok , under the hood on the A/C system there is a accumulator , it gets wicked cold when the A/C system is running ....Its probably the coldest part of the car as its going down the road besides the EVAP core inside the car ...

Why isnt it mounted inside the Intake Airbox ? Why not put that wasted cold to good use instaed of keeping the strut tower from getting lonely ? Seems if you could draw the incoming air into the engine over the accumulator you migth be able to cool it a bit ...A real cold air intake system?

why hasnt anyone done this ?

should i give up drinking ?

Well, should that thing burst open (I've seen it happen before), getting good ol' R-12 or even 134-A into the intake stream might not work too well for your engine...Or even anything remotely close to it.

Another thing to consider is condensation on the outer canister: don't need water droplets getting sucked down into the intake either.

One thing that might work out is to put it into the radiator flow in some way where the cooler air would flow onto the radiator. The only thing I would worry about is if your car did a nose dive into the ass-end of another car and again, the accumulator might blow up causing all kinds of mischief.

Thoughts anyone?

ahh , interesting point ...id never seen one blow up myself ..but man if it did thatd be a world of hurt

as for water droplets , im not worried about that , i think they would atomize before they even hit the throttle plates ...hell that might even cool the carge even more ..seems like ive seen somewhere where water was injected directly into the intake stream , it was a one off , they usuyaly spray water on the inter cooler not in it ...

but the idea that these guys explode concerns me alot ...

i think ive got you thinking too ....i see that little can of cold and i start thingking there might be something fun we can do with that

ahh , interesting point ...id never seen one blow up myself ..but man if it did thatd be a world of hurt

as for water droplets , im not worried about that , i think they would atomize before they even hit the throttle plates ...hell that might even cool the carge even more ..seems like ive seen somewhere where water was injected directly into the intake stream , it was a one off , they usuyaly spray water on the inter cooler not in it ...

but the idea that these guys explode concerns me alot ...

i think ive got you thinking too ....i see that little can of cold and i start thingking there might be something fun we can do with that

Well the explosion wasn't supposed to happen the way it did, and it wasn't related to getting into the intake stream...It just concernes me a little...

Even if the accumulator springs a leak, refrigerant isn't something I would want to combust along with my fuel: don't know the exact properties of the two together, but they always say "keep away from open flame" on those containers. Just something I would consider.

As for the water injection aftercooler, I've been considering using that for the turbo project. A plain intercooler would be nice, but so would the water injection. N0DIH kinda has me sold on the idea from a conversation a while ago. The intercooler will be cheaper though. Some guys have even done a thing where they have refrigerant being directly sprayed onto the intercooler: not a good idea for those emissions-crazed states...You know that thing where you expend refrigerant into the o-zone? Those freakin' hippies would bitch a fit about it :helpless:

I would like to think that the water droplets would just get caught in the filter too or atomize like you said, but if water does get into the fuel, performance, amongst other things, would suffer.

r134a wont hurt the ozone ....and its cheap ....spray it on your cooler ..

yah thats the problem i got to thinking about with the placemnt of the accumulator , if its below the filter the filter stands a chnace of catching anything that went wrong , but will also get damp from the water ...i think you would have to run a k&n type filter to get by with it ...

but i think more water will simply fall downward and out of the airbox ...

also i wonder how water condeses on a object if air is being drawn over it at a fairly high rate ? worse ? beatter ?

That is a good idea, never thought about it. The accumulator is often needed to be warm to prevent freezing, so possibly that might pose some problems in cooler weather. Even in warmer weather the adiabatic cooling ("wind chill") might cause it to freeze quickly. Some 307 powered cars had the heater hose wrapped around the accumulator for addtional heat.

Maybe you can rig up some ducting to go through it and give it a try. I have wondering about having a small AC condenser providing super chilled air to the carb on my T/A as it can't have an intercooler. But I don't know if the volume of air would overcome it. It would still benefit, but will it overcome the HP loss by running the AC on.

But with your idea, and in most Cads, most people leave the AC on a lot, might gain a little. Can't hurt to rig it up, but you would need some mechanism to evaluate if you actually gain any power or not. My choice is the handheld stopwatch and a acceleration run from say 60-80 in a fixed gear, like 3rd, or 2nd. Just find a gear that you can WOT in and not have a shift. Start the stopwatch as you pass a mph # and stop at another mph #. Then do it 3-6 times for consistency, watch coolant temp to keep it stable for each run. Then make the change, and do it again. Then, to verify all is real, change it back and evaluate it again. It takes time, but this is the approach Jim Hand has done with his GTO Wagon and it has rewarded him with 11.30's with factory 1970 iron heads. No trick parts, even a cast crank. He has tested about every part on the car that can make power or not. And he knows well what works and what doesn't and mostly always, why.

Frankly, the R12/134 canister bursting is a somewhat negligible problem. Especially if you use an air filter. I doubt regrigerant is that more combustable than gasoline, so I don't think that's a problem either. You hear about gas tanks blowing up, but if refrigerant was a problem you'd hear more about it.

A small amount of water vapor entering from condensation would certainly help the combustion, like the increases in horsepower in dew/fog/rainy weather. I would see this as a two-fold gain -- one from cold air, and the other from water vapor--as long as excess water can be drained.

uh oh ...looks like i might be fabbing something up ......

Certainly makes for an interesting topic.. but then you have the reason why manufacturers haven't done it yet... which is??? regulations...safety...expense....practicality in manufacturing?

Trying to figure if it'd be practical in my '82 eldo... certainly have a lot of room, might just have to route some air ducts..

Frankly, the R12/134 canister bursting is a somewhat negligible problem. Especially if you use an air filter.

Yeah, just don't smoke cigarrettes around them when they're leaking... :leaving: :hide:

Otherwise, the cooler air might work. Oh Hell, give it a shot Stoney! Just no smoking...

Not all together a bad idea but if you add up available BTU things probably won't look good. You need a whole lot more going on to make a difference in power.

yah thats what im worried about , it may not be enought o cool the air enough degrees to make it work ...

lumina , i hadnt had a ciggie in 3 months now

Well.. theoretically it's cool enough to blow cold air at high speed into the cabin... The question is the apparatus and setup to take advantage of it. I bet if you take some decent sized metal tubing to wrap around it, and you find a way to blow air through it, you'd get a decent effect.

Heck, if you were determined enough, you could get the air duct itself and route it from the passenger compartment into the air cleaner. ;)

I sucked up some freon down a vacuum line into the engine once. Smoked like crazy. (oil is suspended in the freon). But was find.

Engines are great vacuum pumps to suck down an AC system....

ahh , interesting point ...id never seen one blow up myself ..but man if it did thatd be a world of hurt

as for water droplets , im not worried about that , i think they would atomize before they even hit the throttle plates ...hell that might even cool the carge even more ..seems like ive seen somewhere where water was injected directly into the intake stream , it was a one off , they usuyaly spray water on the inter cooler not in it ...

but the idea that these guys explode concerns me alot ...

i think ive got you thinking too ....i see that little can of cold and i start thingking there might be something fun we can do with that
Mine blew up on my Cutlass. There was a bang and a whoooooossshh and that was it.

Blaze

I sucked up some freon down a vacuum line into the engine once. Smoked like crazy. (oil is suspended in the freon). But was find.

Engines are great vacuum pumps to suck down an AC system....
I never thought of that. Thats pretty cool. my grandpa showed me a trick that when you jump the compressor to make it run keep pressing the shrader valve on the high side and letting the air out. As it pulls vacuum on the low side you can discharge the air on the high side. After no more air comes out you can charge it. Of course, when I went to school to get certified they assured us that was a no no because the of the potential freon loss to the environment.

Blaze

The intercooler will be cheaper though. Some guys have even done a thing where they have refrigerant being directly sprayed onto the intercooler: not a good idea for those emissions-crazed states...You know that thing where you expend refrigerant into the o-zone? Those freakin' hippies would bitch a fit about it :helpless:


I don't think r-134a is bad for the environment, just people (it's corrosive).

Random thoughts in intercooling:

I've seen NOS sprayed directly onto intercooler fins, mostly on smaller cars where you cant get big intercoolers bolted up. It's gotta help - freezes 'em right up. I 'cold-burned' myself multiple times on my NOS tank fittings (when I used the stuff on my Mustang).

An efficient intercooler makes a huge difference - the more square inches of fins the better, obviously. I picked up a couple of tenths moving from stock to a much larger stock-location intercooler on the GN. One of these days I'm going get the IC out from under the hood and up in front, but the front-mount intercoolers are pricey.

The Typhoon had a liquid-to-air intercooler but I doubt it really helped as much as a decent front-mounted air-to-air would have. They put the coolant resevoir for the IC on top of the hot exhaust manifold, and the IC itself was puny.

Jim