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, Thu, 14 Aug 2003 06:53:54
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Coincidentally, I spoke with Johann Heuschmid, the German '80s Saab tuner, two weeks or so ago, about intercooling options (as he's back at the front recently). He first developed an IC for the 900T, mostly as a measure to improve longeivity as many engines went bang after about 50,000 kms according to him - we're talking the land of unrestricted Autobahns here, and traffic was er, a bit lighter twenty+ years ago - and Saab more or less adopted his design. Anyways, he maintains that the left side of the engine bay proved to be the best location (given the above I can see why he wasn't keen on a FMIC design that poses a restriction to the airflow to radiator), and that the later OE design ('89- on, with ten wide rows instead of fifteen narrow ones) was actually done based on his findings.
His take was that for any realistic power level in a c900 (he has done 300+ but says 260, 270 is nicer for the road) there's not a whole lot to gain with wholesale 'improvements' to the IC layout although his own side mount IC is a bit more substantial and there's a claimed drop in intake temps with another 10C using this unit, of which he will have a new batch made in a month or two) instead of the OE item. As a matter of fact, he said he built successful 375 hp rallycross engines -without- IC back in the days.
Then of course, there is the 12.5 sec 99T (which means it runs about 280 whp at least for the duration of a 1/4 mile?) that came from Sweden, and ran with a stock IC+fan in an engine bay that wasn't designed for IC installation...
Take this for what you want (I certainly wouldn't take -anyones- findings as a gospel) - but it does give another slant on things.
My personal view is that people who report serious core saturation problems with relatively modestly powered c900's, and then go for massive IC cores placed in front of the rad, are partly compensating for an inefficient intake/turbo/exhaust system (most notably overspeeding the stock turbo and retaining the restrictive downpipe assembly), and mismatched ignition timing. They also invariably allow their APC's to give massive inital boost pressures that do nothing but spin the front wheels in the lower three gears, wreck gearboxes, and heat up things rather quickly, after which APC drops the boost to 1.0 bar or lower when charging for the redline.
Now there's nothing wrong in se when you spend fifity bucks for a junkyard IC and get a halfway pleasant result, versus spending a lot more on proper engineering of the turbo system, but the conclusion that the stock IC install 'sucks' and the people who devised it are íncompetent' is drawn all too quickly.
posted by 62.58.17...
, Thu, 14 Aug 2003 06:53:54, Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:36:44
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