Dez Racing's Air-To-Water Intercooler Install - Chillin' Like A Villain

MacPherson necked down the aftercooler so it could mate properly with the billet base.

The intake bolts on easily.

A Holley 80mm throttle body controls the air entering the engine due to class restrictions. DMC can build a hat to handle up to 90mm or even 105mm, if that's what the customer requires for his or her combination.

Brian Machie of Dez Racing removes the F1R head unit.

The supercharger's scroll is loosened and rotated to face downward. The downward exit was the only option because Dez elected to run a blow-through MAF sensor. The pipe makes some unique bends, but it feeds the MAF sensor properly and comes up into the throttle body with ease.

The blower tube attaches to the throttle body using V-band clamps. Essentially there are two flanges that are pressed together and use a rubber O-ring to seal the piping. A special clamp holds the two pipes together for a leak-free seal.

Dez holds up the clamp used in the V-band-style clamping method. It's a sure way to keep the pipes from blowing apart from one another when under boost.

Here is the rather unusual routing of the charge pipe as it comes out of the blower, bends and shoots straight through the MAF sensor, then makes a turn upward and enters the throttle body. The ProCharger blow-off valve (arrow) is located as far as away from the throttle body as possible. It relieves pressure in the charge pipe when the throttle body is shut, preventing boost from backing up into the blower.

Water lines came from Home Depot, and Dez recommends 1-1/4-inch hose to go along with a high-volume electric water pump, such as the Meziere unit he uses in all hard-core applications. The Meziere pump (55-gph flow rate) and large-sized hose are worth a drop of 30 degrees over -12 hose and a bilge pump.

The aftercooler is a one-pass type of cooler, meaning the water goes in one side and out the other; it is not recirculated over the fins. This type of cooler is better, as fresh, cold water rather than heated water is always in the manifold. It enters from the passenger side and exits on the driver side, where it is routed back to the water tank located in the hatch.

Meziere built the block for this application, and MacPherson modified it to handle the three inlets and outlets.

Dez filled the tank with a few bags of ice and some water before the dyno testing began. Some racers find it better to pre-chill the aftercooler by circulating ice water with the engine off. That works great in the summertime when the humidity is high and the car has been baking in the sun.

The aftercooler dropped the inlet temps, but that made our test engine stumble and not happy due to low ignition timing. This dyno graph represents the engine with 16 degrees of timing and the aftercooler chilling the air down to 82 degrees. The engine went pig-rich and didn't perform well at all-it made less power than the non-intercooled combination. We attributed this to too low of a temperature in the cylinders and the engine was not efficient in igniting the air/fuel mixture.

Dez added some timing and trimmed out some fuel. Power shot up immediately to an impressive 797 rwhp and 613 rwtq. Ignition timing was set at 23 degrees for this test.

Two more degrees of timing were added, bringing the final number to 25. It was 9 degrees greater than our baseline of 16. It proved once again to increase power, and this time the Stang shot out 824 rwhp and 626 rwtq. Dez said he could probably go a bit higher without any hint of detonation, but we felt the test provided adequate results. Cooler and denser air will increase power provided there is additional timing and/or more boost-two elements that cannot be increased in non-intercooled applications.

Only a few different cowl hoods will clear the front of the intake manifold. Dez runs a VFN cowl hood on his NMCA Street Race Mustang and doesn't have any clearance issues. Different manifold configurations can be made for hood-clearance issues.