One of these days, I might regret all the time and money spent on this project..but for now...
Installed my Front Mount Heat Exchanger last night, had a slight clearance issue with the old heat exchanger's Hayden fan so I said the hell with it and took the fan out, never liked the sound of the thing anyway. Don’t pay attention to the skanky foot.
System took just a hair over 2 gallons to fill up, so almost exactly twice the water capacity it had before.
Did some road testing today with both cores installed, ambient of 72-74, IAT (Inlet Air Temperature) never got over 100 even when stuck in traffic or during a lot of WOT runs. And that's without the Hayden fan.
Did the old "go shopping" trick after the first round of runs, spent 15 minutes in the grocery store, came back out, and in about a minute IAT was back to "norm" in 25mph traffic, it used to take about 4-5 minutes in stop and go driving to get the water cooled back down after sitting hot (and even sitting hot, IAT was only about 60 degrees above ambient, not 100 like without the cooler). Keep in mind that before this upgrade, the IAT was about 15-20 degrees higher across the board with the single HE.
The combination of having 2x the water and almost 2x the cooling surface area does a great job. It's right in the 20 degree IAT drop (after warm-up) I was looking for, give or take, it cools down quicker after sitting, is quieter (no fan), and it should have no problem keeping that water cool even after extended high RPM use. I'll try to test that out soon, might go carve a few canyons this weekend, that's a good workout.
As far as performance goes, it "felt" a little stronger than normal once the car was warmed up, just like it would if the outside temp was 20 degrees lower. I couldn't tell any difference when the car was cold, but at that point the water in the system should be right at ambient for a short time anyway.
And I finally got around to getting the old HE blacked out, you can't even tell I have either one unless you look real close, they just vanish behind the grills. If you LIKE the front mount look, just leave it bare aluminum, it'll stand out pretty good.
