Found a place in town that had brass mister nozzles rated for 80psi that are suppose to have a really fine mist. Comes with a removable filter. Only $3 ea.

So I rigged up my holley red to pump the water and put a bigger spring in it. I think it's putting out about 20psi now. I know I'll probably need more psi to the tip but it is misting ok now. And I'm sure the holley will eventually fail, not being made for pumping water, but this is just my prototype.

Anyone see any problem with misting the trans cooler? The problem is, there's not good access to just mist the intercooler. It's blocked by the ac and trans radiators.

I'm going to hook up my scanguage and do a couple of hwy runs with it misting and without to see if the scangauge shows an intake temp change.

 

Can you extend the hose and mount the nozzle on the next bolt over on the edge of the ic?

 

Yes, you think that would help?

 

You might want to consider using distilled water instead of tap water. Otherwise you will end up coating the rediator and trans cooler with minerals and reduce the cooling capacity of both.

Also, you can use an RV water pump. They produce about 65 psi if I remember correctly, and are obviously water tolerant.

 

Nice tip on the distilled water and rv pump. I didn't think of an rv pump! It looks like I can get one off ebay for around $50

 

Go woth a Shurflo pump. They have an internal bypass if it gets too much pressure. It should work pretty good for you.
q

 

Well, got a Shurflo in town for $65 and put in a second nozzle. The Shurflo works awesome, it cycles on and off as it need to for pressure. probably turns on once every 45 seconds and only runs about 1 second to build up the pressure.

Any ideas on better placement of the nozzles? Well, I'll see if this does any good at all...

 

I thought about doing this with co2 but haven't got around to it yet. has any one else tried this.

 

This is a good thread. I think that we have all thought about doing something like this, but no followthrough. I'd say that it may help some, but nothing too noticeable. I hope that I'm wrong, good luck.

 

Thanks, J. I hope it gives some benefit, otherwise back to the drawing board...

I did find a good use for the sunglass holder. Hidden switch panel! The misters run off of a relay that is triggered off the lift pump relay. So if I leave the switch on it will come on and go off with the truck, but I can also cancel the misters with the master switch.

 

Very sweet, that is a great spot to mount it. I hope it works for you. I thought of doing something like this before, but my plan was to use a windshield washer pump & make the sprayer out of [2] 1/4" or 5/16" brakeline with small holes drilled throughout to hit the entire radiator.

 

Update.

From running the truck and watching the misters the hot side of the intercooler is evaporating the water and the cold side wasn't. So I put both misters on the hot side and it is evaporating soon after contact with the intercooler. And from what I understand, the evaporation is what you want. Just getting the intercooler wet doesn't do anything.

Now whether I'm getting enough evaporation on enough surface area to make a difference in intake temp, I don't know. According to my Scangauge2 it's making very little difference, but I don't think where scangauge gets it's temp from accurately reflects changes in intercooler temperature.

Some things I found in testing today:

- Intake temperature according to scangauge is about 45-50* hotter than ambient temp while moving

- Intake temperature while idling stopped gets about 55-60* hotter.

- If your hard on the throttle with a lot of boost scangauge doesn't show higher intake temps than normal driving (which leads me to believe it's not giving an accurate reading)

- misting at hwy speeds doesn't effect the temperature as much as 30-40 mph driving. Hwy temps are a few degrees cooler, but when misting in stop and go driving temps seem to recover quicker from getting hotter while sitting.

Just some things I found today. I'll have to play with it some more and see what happens.

I checked on the price of distilled water and it's about a buck a gallon. I'd have to see some significant gains to justify spending 3 or 4 bucks per tank on water. Or just use tap water and be prepared to clean calcium deposits every six months...

 

In my line of work (Oil and gas industry), with the type of exchangers that we use, doing what you are doing is a no no. I myself have done this very thing to keep equipment running in extreme heat...and it works very well but it has been brought to my attention from various maintenance people that what happens when doing this is two things

1. firstly as a previous poster stated unless distilled water is used you develop mineral deposits in the exchanger.....further reducing the exchangers ability to cool.

2. Apparently this will also cause the cooling fins to distort and loose contact with the exchanger tubes.

Of course maybe comparing an automotive cooler to an industrial heat exchanger is not a valid comparison (hopefully some radiator specialists will chime in here).

Anyway, hope this info does not apply to your little invention

Take care

John

 

I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about metallurgy, but I think it would take a lot more extreme heating and cooling cycles to cause fins to distort and/or disconnect from the intercooler. Think Winter. Rain mist hits your radiators all winter long. 40 degree rain hitting a 190 degree radiator. I think they're made to hold up to that.

 

I relocated the pump from the rear of the truck to under the front air dam so it has less distance to pressurize hose. It makes a lot better spray on the misters, also less time for them to leak out the pressure once turned off.

I also redid the bracket holding the misters to more evenly space them.

I was also wondering if I could add a quart or so of rubbing alcohol to the water for better evaporation?

Anyway, the testing continues...