Air to Air or Air to Liquid Aftermarket Inter cooler?

[BDUb]

Anyone have experience with the 2 different types. If this is discussed elsewhere please link it as I searched before posting. Benefits, cons, etc. Will be helpfull

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[NOVA_Ranger]

Haven’t noticed any heat soak issues with the stock intercooler. Is this an issue for some?

 

[Frenchy]

Even though the factory intercooler does have a fair amount of heat soak it is still pretty efficient for most of the use these trucks go through. Between Air to Air VS. Air to Liquid is a huge difference and has its pros and cons both ways.

Obviously Ford chose the Air to Air for the Ranger. Because of this it would be in ones best interest to stick with it. Why? If parts fail its easier to get them.

That being said Ford does have a bit of vehicles with Air to Liquid type intercoolers. The vehicles I'm aware of are the Superdudy Pickups with the 6.7 and the supercharged Mustangs. There may be more but I'm not sure wich ones. For those applications they work well and dont have issurs either. Also for those its best to stick with Factory design for the fact its easier to get parts.

Now between the two a Air to Liquid may keep a more steady temperature compared to Air to Air but with Air to Liquid the coolant inside can get hot and take a little bit to cool down(really depends on application and what you are doing). Also if you spring a coolant leak on an Air to Liquid your intercooler won't be able to do its job anymore.

Hope that helps

 

[jflogerzi]

Stick with air to air.

 

[BassRanger]

Haven't seen anyone demonstrate heat soak in the stock charge cooler. Nor have I seen any convincing data that there's much to be gained from upgrading the stock charge cooler, considering the price of aftermarket units.

There's a reason nearly no one runs A2W on street turbo vehicles. It's incredibly difficult to keep water cool in street applications. Water is very efficient at absorbing heat. The problem is it is also very resistant to shed heat. A2W is great in an environment where you can artificially cool the water via ice or refrigerant, like at a track. It's not so great when you have to depend on ambient air to cool this heated water. If you've ever idled a blower car on a hot day and seen your IAT's climbing over 200*, you'd know what this is like.

Pretty much the only place you see a prevalence of A2W charge cooling is on blower cars, where the supercharger is mounted directly onto the engine. In those applications running the compressed air through a heat exchanger is far more practical than trying to plumb charge piping between the supercharger and the intake manifold.

 

[DukeCanBuildit]

Clearly, I need to learn more. ?

 

[Msfitoy]

Haven’t noticed any heat soak issues with the stock intercooler. Is this an issue for some?

Not sure about owners who drive their Ranger like it's stolen but for me, I see the AIT at or 1-2F to ambient...after idling for 10 minutes standing still the temp might go up 10-20F but would quickly return to ambient once moving...excellent IC...

 

[BDUb]

Thanks everyone for the input! Looking at things right now as I plan on increasing power in the future but before doing anything, learning about it is key.

 

[Frenchy]

Haven't seen anyone demonstrate heat soak in the stock charge cooler. Nor have I seen any convincing data that there's much to be gained from upgrading the stock charge cooler, considering the price of aftermarket units.

There's a reason nearly no one runs A2W on street turbo vehicles. It's incredibly difficult to keep water cool in street applications. Water is very efficient at absorbing heat. The problem is it is also very resistant to shed heat. A2W is great in an environment where you can artificially cool the water via ice or refrigerant, like at a track. It's not so great when you have to depend on ambient air to cool this heated water. If you've ever idled a blower car on a hot day and seen your IAT's climbing over 200*, you'd know what this is like.

Pretty much the only place you see a prevalence of A2W charge cooling is on blower cars, where the supercharger is mounted directly onto the engine. In those applications running the compressed air through a heat exchanger is far more practical than trying to plumb charge piping between the supercharger and the intake manifold.

Another advantage to Air to Water is space saving. If you look at the Super Dutd Pickups with the 6.7 they use a fairly small(but effective) Air to Water intercooler. Could Ford have done something else? Possibly but what they did works

 

[Wytchdctr]

You could always trim some plastic and drop a bag of ice on top of the stock air/air if you want a bit of an extra boost for a run down the 1/4 - tow up a mountain - etc.

 

[NOVA_Ranger]

Not sure about owners who drive their Ranger like it's stolen but for me, I see the AIT at or 1-2F to ambient...after idling for 10 minutes standing still the temp might go up 10-20F but would quickly return to ambient once moving...excellent IC...

I drive the hell out of mine at times, numerous WOT pulls in a short period of time, and never noticed signs of the stock IC falling behind. Running a 93 LMS tune. I think I'm going to trust Ford's engineers on this one.

 

[Wytchdctr]

I drive the hell out of mine at times, numerous WOT pulls in a short period of time, and never noticed signs of the stock IC falling behind. Running a 93 LMS tune. I think I'm going to trust Ford's engineers on this one.

If you want to be super cool you can get kits to spray nitrous (maybe other gases) on the IC before a pull or heavy load. The last time I saw that the poor Prelude wasn't able to keep up with a Genesis and got super butthurt. So cool looking yes. Effective... Ehh a bit maybe?

Stock IC is bigger than the mustang IC. Id leave it alone.

I only recently saw any boost (that may have been in my head) was after a car wash on a stupid hot day. Sprayed the grill out and as I left it seemed to have a bit more pep.

 

[NOVA_Ranger]

If you want to be super cool you can get kits to spray nitrous (maybe other gases) on the IC before a pull or heavy load. The last time I saw that the poor Prelude wasn't able to keep up with a Genesis and got super butthurt. So cool looking yes. Effective... Ehh a bit maybe?

Stock IC is bigger than the mustang IC. Id leave it alone.

I only recently saw any boost (that may have been in my head) was after a car wash on a stupid hot day. Sprayed the grill out and as I left it seemed to have a bit more pep.

Anybody installed water/meth injection on a Ranger yet? That was popular on the 3.5L Ecoboost SHO, when I had one and followed what guys were doing to push them past the 600HP mark on stock internals.

 

[BDUb]

I am not going to take the engine this far but it is crazy how much power these little 4 cylinders can put out.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cu...s-684-hp-from-ford-four-cylinder-23-ecoboost/

 

[Wytchdctr]

Holy crap. I wonder if that would take a real world pull down the 1/4 keeping all the rods in the block. That is a ton of power from a 2.3.

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