The 70 amps is just for the moment when you're fully taxing the system, which would be holding the wheel at full lock. It spends the vast majority of the time just freewheeling in bypass pulling ~3amps.

I use photobucket and just use the 'insert image' button with the direct link to the picture.

 

nice setup

 

Almost there... All of the big stuff is back together, but I have maybe a couple leisurely hours of finish work (securing wires, etc.). I must be getting old, because a couple years ago I would have pushed into the night and finished, then drove it to work exhausted the next morning dealing with whatever didn't work right...

I'm surprised at how quiet it is idling. I can't wait to hear what the 3" sounds like on the road!

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any clean way to route the intercooler water hoses away from the heater hoses. I'm still thinking on that, but I may make some kind of heat shield to go between them if I'm not satisfied with the cooling once it's on the road. The big 3/4" hose kinks relatively easily, so the bends have to be pretty gentle. It's just hardware store heater hose, so it could probably benefit from something a little better. The OD was too large to use the securing nuts on the AN fittings. I'm just running distilled water in it for testing to keep the mess to a minimum, and I'm also considering adding an ice/water tank somewhere. I could see that being handy for pulling mountain passes in 100 degree weather.

I'll also have to get the fan installed before this summer. I'm building a fan controller from an Arduino microcontroller. It will run off of the PCM voltage, tap into the engine temp sensor, and have intercooler coolant and ambient temp sensors to compare to decide when to trigger the fan. Eventually, it will listen on the PCM communication line, so I can trigger the fan and other accessories over bluetooth through the OBDII adapter using Torque.

I still need to clean up the engine mounts, but I think that will be saved for another time.








For fun, here's the evolution of the turbo configuration.

The original setup with a TD04L-13 from a WRX


Compound turbos TD03 from a Volvo S80, and the TD04L-13


Previous evolution with the current TD04-08 from a Cummins B3.3

 

how much intake air temp are you monitoring? It would be nice to know the difference between the old A-A intercooler and the A-W intercooler. Are you using the original Jeep OE intake air temp sensor from the OBDII? my new boost guage has a extra probe for trans temp that I am planning on using for Charge Air temp, somewhere, not sure if I will put it before or after the intercooler. it would be very nice to have 3 temps, IAT, pre-cooler temp and aftercooler temp.
you can get more bang than just straight ice and water, if you use Dry ice or regular ice and Acetone, or Alcohol, or the old fashioned ice-cream mix of regular salt and ice. I forget, but I think dry ice acetone is a bit warmer than minus100C, but pretty close, Salt and water ice is about minus 20C.

 

Alcohol And Dry Ice is the way to go. But the BIG downside is if you have a leak and it catches fire you will not see it but you will feel it and watch stuff melt and catch fire.

Besides we are not racing here so the Dry Ice will not last all that long to be reliable. So just Water with some stuff called Water Wetter would do well in a closed system with maybe a smaller radiator to pass the water through in a fresh stream of air.

If you are worried about climbing air temps for short duration hard pulls such as hills or accelerating then you could add a simple spray system made from a Windshield water set up and a few spray nozzles set to spray the mist of water against the air to air Intercooler.

 

Well, I got the Wrangler on the road last night and it's AWESOME!

Vibrations are virtually eliminated, and boost is nearly instant! I'm noticing a few PSI more boost in all situations, which is likely due to the water intercooler's insanely low pressure drop. Intake temps are staying about 10* over ambient temp, compared with 30+* with the air/air intercooler. During a hard pull I wasn't able to push it over 87*, where with the air/air (and 20* cooler ambient temps when I took it down a month ago) it would jump up to 130* in the same pull.

I monitor the air temp at the engine intake sensor from my Glow Shift 3 in 1 gauge. The only downside is that it's a bit slow to react, being a completely enclosed sensor, unlike the factory Jeep IAT, which is open. The IAT wiring came out of the harness with most of the other wiring, but I've been considering putting it back in and switching it out to monitor the temp at the engine intake, then putting the Glow Shift sensor at the compressor output.

It's also going to get a sensor in the outlet of the heat exchanger for the fan controller to compare with ambient temp.


The system is way overbuilt, the heat exchanger is 3x the size of the ones used by people with WRX STIs for example, so I'm not worried about it not keeping up. The only reason that I would have for adding ice or dry ice would be to cool below ambient temperature. I'm already planning a dry ice sink when I eventually build a tank though. The reason is simply that these engines are already working pretty hard (especially in my barn door Wrangler) and I want to give it all the help it can get on 100*+ summer days climbing mountain passes, so dropping it below the 100* ambient would be desirable.

Water has 3x the thermal conductivity and twice the heat capacity of alcohol. The only reason for using alcohol or salt water would be to lower the freezing point, regular antifreeze works just fine for that. I'll have to use antifreeze in the winter, or if I plan on cooling it below freezing, but distilled water is the best bet for a pure ambient closed system.


I'm not sure what you're saying about a smaller radiator. The heat exchanger is a radiator, and you want it as large as you can fit. This is a water to air system, not air to air...

Spraying water on an air to air intercooler has a good effect because you're directly affecting the charge (similar to the water in a water to air intercooler), but because the heat capacity of water is so much higher, the effect on a water to air heat exchanger is minimal.

 

It's showing 1PSI of boost at idle! The intake temp is a bit high, it does heat soak a little when sitting, because it's right above the water neck, and I don't have a fan installed for the heat exchanger yet. The fan and a little heat shield will solve that, but it cools right down when it starts moving anyway.

 

What's your boost pressure and which turbo are you running? Is it the one like FTE is running.

 

Peak boost pressure is somewhere around 25PSI. It is the same kind of TD04 that FTE is running, off of a Cummins 3.3

 

Here's a quick video that I took with my phone tonight while driving around. Sorry for the quality, it was just a spur of the moment thing. I think the new 3" exhaust is quieter than the old 2.25"; you can get some idea of the volume by comparing with the sound from the water. The engine is very smooth, it's running somewhere between ~700-1000RPM in the video.