Roadie correct. Same reason why a water to air IC only has to be 1/3 the size of an A2A unit to have the same cooling effect. Like I said before the heat exchanger is the key.

Jose

 

WRONG! Before you start spouting that it's 'simple physics', you need to have a basic understanding of physics. Our engines do not have liquid coolant because it is more efficient - it's there to provide a more uniform temperature across the engine. Different parts of the engine are subject to a large range of temperatures. Some areas are extremely hot [For instance, around the exhaust ports/CCs, etc.], while some areas are much cooler. Adding a liquid coolant allows the temperatures to more or less average out between all the engine components and the liquid coolant, but it is air that removes the heat from the system. Doesn't matter if you had antifreeze in it the last time you checked - in the end, it's AIR cooled. The strictly 'air-cooled' engine is at a disadvantage; not because the total heat removed from the system would be greater with a liquid coolant in the system (lets assume the surface area on the radiator core of the 'water-cooled' engine and surface area on air-cooled block are equal, air flow across the hear exchangers are equal, and so on), but because its much harder to engineer an air-cooled engine that 'averages-down' those intense hot spots effectively, since they need more surface area and air flow than cooler parts.

All this is neither here nor there, since it is down right silly to compare an 'air-cooled' engine to an air to air intercooler... While hot spots in an engine can cause problems, the hotter areas on the air to air inter cooler [entry tank, core near the entry tank] don't make a bit of difference.

The point of my previous post was that a liquid cooled intercooler is limited by its air cooled heat exchanger, and that the heat exchangers used on Li setups aren't going to pull as much heat out as a comparable air to air setup. Anyway, evaluating the proper intercooler setup requires a variable that no one else had bothered to mention - how the car is driven on the street. If the driver keeps it in boost a lot, the air to air is probably his better bet. If he only sees boost for short periods, and the heat exchanger has sufficient time to pull the heat out between those periods, than a liquid setup works just as well.

 

If all else fails, just stop at a jiffy store and fill up your empty big gulp cup full of ice and dump it into the water tank.

 

One 1/4 pass turns ~10# of ice on my old setup into 100% luke warm water... That big gulp might help for about 15 feet or so!

 

What was your "old setup"?

 

Take your pick...

Past few years:
87 T-Type turbonetics TE-62 / custom $2k intercooler made by CAS - when I first installed it, some of the old school turbo buick guys got into it with me about li intercoolers not being a streetable.

96 T/A 355, ported TFS TW LT1 heads, crane HIR (inverted flank lobes) custom turbo cam, T-76 Q-trim BB, etc. Started out with a TT air-air intercooler... sold all the intercooler/pipes to aram and intended to install the CAS setup from my Buick. I fabbed up a hard pipe from the turbo to the TB so I could keep it driving while I worked out how the CAS stuff would be installed ... and proceeded to blow up the motor w/o the intercooler.

Present project:
67 Corvette with a 383 LT1 T-80 / custom intercooler using a new toyota core I bought from Japan... core is getting air and water tanks TIG'ed on this weekend.

My wife and I are trying to put together another vacation to Japan in a month or two... Might pick up a few more intercooler cores (or anything else I can find!) if I have time. There is a lot of turbo stuff over there - it seems like a very large portion of the cars in Japan are turbocharged ... not unusual to see families driving around 4 dr sedans with large front mount intercoolers.