Re: Upping the COOL quotient! Coolant Cooled Liquid Intercooler Cooling system in GT TSI! INDIA's Fi Interesting. Basically an AUX radiator post the expansion tank in your car. Interesting mod for sure. I can see the benefits a bit as adding a heat sink post the coolant expansion tank will result in a cooler coolant going back into the engine.
My two cents.
#1 The Polo GT TSI has 2 radiators. One primary radiator to cool the engine AND cool the air-water intercooler mounted on the intake manifold. There is a thermostat that controls when the the secondary radiator is used to provide additional cooling to coolant before it enters the intercooler which is on more or less after 10 mins of driving in our lovely tropical climate. Adding a third radiator to the system will improve efficiency, provided its placed in series with the secondary radiator. I dont see that being the case here. This is placed in series with the primary radiator post the coolant expansion tank, so I doubt this will make more power. It will however make the engine run cooler.
#2 Placement of the new radiator is crap. Its a Air to Water Radiator.. it NEEDS airflow THROUGH it to work properly. As it sits now its acting more like a expansion chamber and less like a radiator.
If it were upto me, I'd remove the front fog light, place it in serial after the secondary radiator. So coolant goes into secondary radiator, gets cooled, goes into aux radiator, gets cooled further, goes into intercooler and voila it makes for a cooler Intake Air Temp and that leads to denser air and more power.
#3 As most of u know I ran the pants off my GT TSI with Revo 97 map on and off the track. I never felt the car overheat or the IAT's go beyond 60 degree C no matter what the ambient temp was. Engine temp was always constant at 90 and IAT climbed to 60 and held there even in 45 degree outside air temp. That said, a 60 degree IAT is nothing to be proud of. My K04 Skoda keeps IAT at 45 degree no matter what, unless I'm sitting idling in traffic. So the existing system is very very efficient and hold up well to a increased boost but could be potentially augmented to provide lower IAT. That said this would be of help in the config I mentioned because it has the potential to lower the IAT's further which in turn would yield a cooler intake charge and can potentially improve the consistency of power delivery and also improve power delivery.
#4 Additional coolant volume thanks to this tank is always welcome in any air to liquid cooling system. HOWEVER the waterpumps on most VAG cars are the weak points. Enough VW's, Audi's and Skoda's out there with failed or failing waterpumps. Most of it is due to the thermostat being integrated into the waterpump and that collects crap over time and goes bust. My friend's audi A6 3.0T is suffering from the same right now. So over time the flow efficiency of the pump decreases. Now add more volume to the system and you will be stressing out the waterpump further which is of concern. Companies like AMS provide an inline electric pump to add to the system with the Cooling Kits for the 3.0T and F81/82 M3/M4, both of which are using a similar air to water intercooler system like our humble GT TSIs.
I don't know how much more coolant this expansion tank contains but it looks like it adds about a liter of coolant capacity to the existing system. So stressing out the coolant pump can be an issue. I've been debating and designing the same mod for a while using the OEM RS4 Auxilart Radiator but then gave up on it as I couldn't get a pump to add to the system and also a replacement thermostat that would keep the radiator bypass open longer and also the car was doing just great as is without it.
#5 PLEASE POST LOGS! The VAG cars have tremendous support for data logging and u can literally data log before and after implications of everything. So whenever you are putting forward the claims of a product (be it Pedal Tune or a aux radiator) back it up with logs of relevant parameters (before and after) so people don't get into the quintessential Indian critic mode and you can avoid a lot of moronic and pointless discussions.
Hope this helps move the discussion forward. |