Howdy all,
well out gunning a van at 30 is childs play.... I run freeways, and travel alot. I have a tendence to fly low, did you know the mustangs gt's run outa steam at 110? hehehe.... at least this one did. the owner was tollaly fabber gassed that a 300sd 3L was faster than his brand new gt mustang ... was slower than my 22 year old benz, at 4,000lbs and got better mpg doing it.
as to the intercooler, a plug and play intercooler for my 617 would be very nice, and I as one look one with intertest. I've seen the difference in my friends truck, its worth the effort.

Heheheheheh, you would have to be a moron to believe that a Mustang GT has less than 125 hp. Your SD has 125 hp and the only way that you have a higher top speed than a Mustang GT is if you have more horsepower and/or less wind resistance. Since the SD is not too efficient with regard to drag coefficient, I'm not buying it. Just because the other driver let off does not mean that you have a faster vehicle than he does.


It is additionally noted that the 617 is turning about 4700 rpm at 110 mph, with the presumption that the tires are 195-70-14 and the rear axle is 3.07.
It is you who has run out of steam at 110 mph. I'm surprised the 617 even made it that far without shoving a rod through the side of the block.

"The intercooler alone would be kinda useless to me without a pump adjustment and a boost increase to perhaps 14 pounds"
Exactly.... and can't some increase in hp be gained without an intercooler but just by increasing fuel and boost ? At the expense of mileage of course...
and many would say that if one wanted to trade off those things that that would be much cheaper and straightforward...
I doubt there is a market for what you are considering doing....

Of course you can dial up the fuel and the boost, Greg. You can get any amount of power you want out of a diesel. The question is whether you can do it without melting a piston? The limit of any diesel as to hp output is governed by temperatures. It would not be very wise to increase the the fuel and the boost on a conventional 617 turbo.

Now, if you add an intercooler, you have the benefit of decreased charge temperatures and decreased exhaust temperatures. Now, you can safely increase the boost (which will get you nothing by iteself) and also increase the fuel to allow more horsepower without jeapordizing the durability of the engine.

I like the idea of increasing engine power. However, I don't feel comfortable about the auto trans. Most slush boxes are old and it is doubtful that it can sustain significant power boost for long. Anyone knows the power handling capability and longitivity of the slush boxes?

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Shane83SD

I'm with Greg on this one - way more trouble for me than the extra 10-15 HP would be worth. BTW I agree you would have to turn the fuel up a bit to get any more power - how are you going to do this without removing the IP and having a pump shop tweak it to deliver more fuel? An ALDA adjustment might make it a bit quicker in full throttle conditions but I'm pretty sure to get the full benefit of the intercooler you would want to re-work the fuel delivery of the IP to match the added O2 capabilities added by the intercooler.

The poster that said the intercooler mod with no additional fuel modifications would perform better is not correct - Diesels typically operate with a EXCESS of oxygen in the combustion chamber.

Fuel is the limiting factor not air.

You are going to adjust the full load adjustment screw on the back of the pump, as previously explained above.




No prior post in this thread even suggested this.

This is a case of "if you build it, they will come" Several on this board bought up "cold air induction" kits from a guy on Ebay. Unfortunately the kits quality appeared mediocre and often required some owner mods to make them just right. The other issue was the use a K&N filter which was viewed as a poor choice by some. But I digress. The big question here is how many of these kits would you sell. IF the kit was well designed, IF there was minimal or no cutting/modification of the car, IF the intercooler is easy to obtain, IF the price is right, etc. I think you may sell 10 kits, possibly 20 over time if they work well and fit the above criteria. I wish I had a bit more power in my 300D. Not that I want to race anyone but the last road trip I went on there were some mountains in Vermont that required ALL the pedal to maintain speed. Another 10-15hp would have been welcome. If intercooling wasn't beneficial then why do the manufacturers build almost ALL turbodiesels with them now? The benefits are obvious. The technology is proven and there are plenty of examples of aftermarket intercoolers being used as one of the steps to increasing power in older turbodiesels. If the setup Ben Ridge built had worked well, the results proven with hard data, then I think he would have sold quite a few. It was a pretty slick setup. So theres the challenge. Design up a system that does what you say it does, etc. and likely you will have a few buyers. I might be one of them. RT

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I am not sure that cooler air into the combustion chamber... given that the increase in temperature which is used to ignite the fuel will cause lower exhaust gas temperatures..
In fact .... the more air in the bore before compressing may cause higher air temperatures... which may also be independant of the temperature of the burned mixture...
I think that on our Turbo Diesels the limiting factor for piston melting is the design and proper functioning of the oil cooling squirters.. not the temperature of the air above the pistons... since Diesels typically run much cooler than gas engines anyway....

All good stuff. Keep it coming!

Any mod that I do will have before and after dyno charts. I'm sure that the fuel enrichment adjustments can't be all that bad. I have the pump enrichment questions already composed for my local Bosch diesel injection technician to answer this week...

Anybody tried bigger nozzles?

Jim
dieselgeek.com

Well, I am 100% sure that lower charge air temperatures result in lower exhaust temperatures. If this were not true, then the whole premise of an intercooler is flawed and this entire thread can now be deleted

The dyno charts will quantify the horsepower increase. However, and just as important to just about everybody on this board (except Greg ) is the exhaust temperature prior to the intercooler and the exhaust temperature from the same measuring point, using the same measuring equipment, after the intercooler is installed and the fuel is turned up.

Without exhaust temperature data, I would not purchase a kit because I would be concerned about melting a piston.

If this were true, then, with a properly functioning oil squirting system, you could increase the boost to 15 and turn up the maximum fuel delivery on the pump and gain 25 hp without an intercooler. Of course, you would not pay any attention to EGT's, because, as you said above, the temperature of the air above the piston does not matter.

Let us step back a second and try to define the overall assumptions concerning the intercooler question.
I assume that the reason to try to cool the incoming air is to allow more air to be able to be put into the combustion chamber ... allowing more fuel to be added .... the combination of which produces more power for the driver to use.
One of the biggest questions I have concerns FLOW rate of an intercooler... since I know little about its construction... only being familiar with other heat exchangers like condensors , radiators and heat pumps...
What these have in common are a lot of surface area..... and relatively small passages compared to the stock situation where there is just a big hole for the air to traverse.
So from the first mention of intercooler I have questioned whether the small amount of cooling ... providing a small amount of compaction of the incoming air could be done in the amount of space available in our engine compartments.... without interferring with the flow of that cooler air.. thus negating the beneficial effects of cooling the air.
I do not know that with the constants... the max volumn and the compressed volumn... and the relatively constant rate of piston movement... that the temperature of combustion in the cylinder is lowered when the input air is cooler.... and since we know that fuel must be added to get extra power out of the situation ... which clearly causes more heat to be generated...

The intercooler in question might remove 100 degrees Fahrenheit from the charge air under heavy boost. That's a lot of heat.

Jim
dieselgeek.com