For all you supercharged guys that went from Air to water to FMIC how many pounds of boost did you loose?

 

i cant answer that question, but i can say 100% that if i was gonna mess with my seup anymore, i would try a fmic. you just cant beat the efficiency it has when sized properly and the consistency you get. my A2W works well, but if you drive for awhile it can heat soak. the heat transfer in the cooler and the heat transfer in the exchanger takes longer then heat transfer in the fmic. just my thoughts based on a turbo hatch i had and on one side of the intercooler it was warm and on the exit side it was ice cold.

on my a2w, i never get that kinda cooling effect.

 

I can't tell you how much I lost from one vs. the other but.....my IAT's went from 180-190 down to 100-110 when I ditched the A2W and went front mount.

I was running a Comptech kit w/ 12lb pulley and was seeing 9.5-9.75lbs of boost with the front mount (this is in Denver, so Altitude is a factor also).

Scott-

 

With a roots style supercharger you usually want to keep the charge piping as short as possible as its a positive displacement blower. Coming from the mini cooper world, a lot of people that ran longer charge pipes for an FMIC had a serious pressure drop and the decrease in IATs didn't outweigh the drop in boost. It was compounded by the fact that the blower was already at its max RPM redline, and a subsequent smaller pulley wasn't posisble. DSDDC, If your centrifugal blower can make up for the increased area of the charge piping and still stay in its efficiency range, in situations where you're constantly at WOT, an FMIC will have appreciable benefits. Looking at people who have used FMIC, they've lost 2-5psi, at least with the UR FMIC kit that was being sold. Depending on tubing size and length, you could probably work out the increased surface area of whatever system you decide to build, and work out the increased CFM requirements needed from the blower.

 

This is what I was thinking.

That being said for a smaller turbo system that sees mostly street driving and the drag strip using a Air to water might yeild great results. The extra heat of compression from 5PSI is quite large.

 

Bottom line, if your looking to get the most power from your centrifugal SC, the FMIC is out. If your looking to max out at 9-10psi and want max cooling for racing then it makes more sense. With the ult racing fmic which seems to be a very common one, 4psi loss seems to be typical. You just cant make 60-80whp up in lower AIT.

 

Ok guys, I just went from a custom front mount IC to a comptech aftercooler +'s large upgraded heat exchanger. With the front mount boost was about 7.5 psi and the car made 347whp with the aftercooler the boost is about 8.8-9psi and maximum power was 350whp on the same dyno different days. The car had to be retuned after the switch back. So my conclusion is that they make the same power given you upgrade the heat exchanger of the water to air. Boost maybe a bit higher with water to air but the volume of air will always be the same for both setups so at 8krpm the supercharger will output the same amount of air so the power will be the same. What you get with water to air is a bit more response in the low end, what you get with front mount is that you can run more timing safely to offset the lower psi and a bit more constant intake air temps. The car was tuned by Red Star's "Pepo" so I think is a good comparison.

Run whatever is more affordable to you. For water to air I recommend "Frozen boost" they have nice affordable exchangers.

 

Went from about 12lbs to 10lbs with a FMIC and I was still making nearly the same power as I was with the aftercooled setup.

 

Hmm, interesting. Good info guys, as im debating on selling my aftercooler.

 

I really think that if proper upgrades are done to the aftercooler system it can work really well. I dunno if anyone here ever wonders over to the Cobra forums (all my friends drive fords) but they have huge problems when it comes to heating because of the eaton aka "heaton" superchargers on them. If they can figure out how to control their IAT's I see no reason why we cant.