Copper IC piping?
 

Ran across this just now and it seems like it has some real potential to be put to use on here:

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/A_2540/article.html

It seems there are lots of advantages in cost, local avalibility of bends, and extra heat-shedding on the hotside. Downsides are that it is arguably more ugly and the coldside piping will absorb more ambient heat if not insulated.

how much would it cost to braze the pipes together?...here in fresno, the local hardware(lowes, home depot, ace) i havent seen copper piping...unless im not looking hard enough!!!

Copper has gotten ridiculous expensive recently.

Search on the user name Darth Maulata...I believe he had some, if not all, of his intercooler pipes as brazed copper.

Copper is heavy and expensive.

I see no benefit to using it over mild steel unless you don't have a welder and absolutely MUST DIY rather than fabbing it all up, marking it and bringing it to an exhaust shop for welding.

if you build your charge pipes out of copper a mexican will come in the middle of the night to steal it.

I think Porsche is using copper... at the compressor outlets if memory serves.

Aluminium seems like the best bang for your buck concerning weight/heat transfer ratio. same deal with CPU heatsinks. copper heatsinks are better, but they weight so much that its dangerous to mount the motherboard vertical, the heatsink might fall off. aluminium is the choice for all the OEMs. good enough to get the job done.

it would be cool to see someone try it...but i wouldnt do it...GL

Indeed. While copper tube and fittings are readily avaliable in the 2" to 2.5" sizes that interest us, they are ludicrously expensive. For the same cost you can pick up an equal configuration of mandrel-bent aluminim elbows and silicone couplers from an eBay-type outfit such as vecco. Much lighter weight, much easier to assemble.

If you really wanted to go wild with copper, the intercooler itself would be the place to do it. And yet I can't recall seeing any of the major players in the field doing it. Wonder if this tells us something...

indeed, lol

Easier to assemble is another matter Joe. Brazing and sweating copper is dead nutz easy dude. TIG'ing aluminum etc is abit tougher.

True. I was making a comparison between brazed copper and silicone-joined aluminum. Not an absolutely fair comparison, but a simple one.

Although it adds cost and potentially failure points, I like the ease of servicability afforded by silicone couplers. When I need to remove a part of the plumbing, it's just a matter of turning a couple of screws and lifting out an elbow or two. Having the entire coldside and hotside sections built as a single long piece of brazed or welded pipe makes this sort of thing marginally more tedious.

Silicone couplers also have the advantage of building a certain degree of flexability into the pipes.

it would be expensive as hell for all that piping. Copper has high scrap value

Copper pipe comes in many gauges. The thinner wall stuff wouldn't weigh much and is less expensive. The PSI ratings are way more than we need even on the thinnest stuff. It could be really functional and after it turns green will look unreal ghetto fabbed. The CR guy with the rusty fenders and trunk would love this!

I'd polish that shit and clear coat it... would look bad ass.

esp with a mahogany valve cover.

mild steel would rust right? it would have to be stainless or aluminum to have any durabillity down here :td:

aluminized steel, or powder coated mild will live a long and happy life as IC piping.

I'd think that after it turns green, some of the heat-transfer characteristics that supposedly make it preferable to polished aluminum would be lost, no?

the only reasion they stoped using copper in the automotive industry is cuz of cost a copper rad will shed more heat then an aluminum one ...but the cost is way more ... why do u think they use plastic end tanks now??? not because it works better its cheaper ...

umm, cheaper, and lighter, and more reliable. gotta love progress, right?

jeez guys ... it was just a thought, lol. I already have my intercooler sorted out by bell engineering so i am not planning on trying this any time soon.

haha! where i'm from they steal the copper piping from your household plumbing!

You in Detroit?

*edit* Check McMaster Carr... search for "copper pipe elbow". This shit is not cheap.

copper is certianly interesting, but as everyone else has already said...expensive. Funny thing about copper rust...it actually protects the rest of the copper. When the exterior rusts it actually protects the inner copper from being exposed to oxidization and so technically the more rusted a piece of copper is the more it is rust resistant.

If copper is good enough for Lady Liberty, it's good enough for me. Thin wall, easy connections, readily available, it all sounds good for DIY'ers to me. I think the cost wouldn't be too different by the time you figure in silicone connectors, clamps, etc. needed for the traditional materials.

+ there is no mistaking it for anything but DIY!

copper doesnt rust... it oxidizes (i know, splitting hairs...) ;)

aluminum does the same thing, in fact anodising takes advantage of the hardness and chemically inert properties of aluminum oxides

over here they steal the copper from the railroads and the overhead electric power cables:inout:

like it was said before copper was used in alot of cars before until it got expensive.. the copper tubing and pipes for the intercooler were put into place and then smashed together (like other intercoolers that are made) but the final process was to braze it with a brass or other non-corroding material (same as powercoating in a sense). if weight isnt an issue then its good.

another thing to not is that youre only going to get the air cooled so much because the ambient temp is at so and so.. if youre considering whats the best at this point most obvious choice is to go towards a water solution.

Around here guys are stealing stuff off bridges. They've found a bunch of them missing steel support beams! Scary as hell.

the market for scrap steel is that good?

they steal battery jumper cables, and any other copper wires here

my only concern is, do you think itll weigh more than regular piping?

density AL: ~0.0975 lb/in³ (6061-T6, annealed)
density Mild Steel: ~0.284 lb/in³ (1020, cold worked)
density SS: ~0.289 lb/in³ (316, cold worked)
density CU: ~0.324 lb/in³ (cold drawn)

It's all going to depend on wall thicknesses, but volume wise Cu is heavy shit.

If you don't understand this... you are too stupid to be a member here.

Of course it's going to be heavier. How much though? It looks to be about 10% heavier than steel from Arkmage's numbers. On the complete system that would be what, 1-2lbs if using the same gauge piping? Somebody try this and report results! Copper is easy to work with. That's gotta be worth something!

Bad idea.Copper heats up too quick and retains heat better than steel.

The faster it heats the faster it cools. If your statement was true copper wouldn't be used as a heat sink so often. CPUs in particular normally use copper heat sinks.

+1. All the high-end heatsinks use copper, cheap OEM heatsinks are made of AL. BUT you know what they use to transfer the heat between the CPU die and the heatsink? Silver

Interesting topic that got me thinking.... copper is definitely the better material in a perfect world, but there are apparently some challenges when it comes to building intercoolers or radiators from copper that make aluminum superior for this application with current manufacturing techniques. Alot of it comes down to having to braze/solder the copper together, which acts as an insulator and defeats alot of the purpose of using copper in the first place. Whereas aluminum can be welded directly and there is no interruption in heat transfer.

I read some conflicting reports, but the only positive ones were on a copper organizations website, so go figure.

Google 'copper radiator' and start reading ;)

if it heats up quicker then its dissepating heat quicker too, i'm not sure but i think that steel has a higher specific heat than copper, meaning its gonna take a while for the heat from the air to be absorbed into and leave the steel

After a bit more thought and a little more reading on the subject, i I think that using copper for the hotside piping and aluminum/steel for the coldside would be the best way to go since it could help shed a few degrees before it even reaches the intercooler.

Ok I found the article I read long ago that first sparked my interest in using charge pipes as a means of aiding the turbo, and it is written by Corky Bell, and while he is not using copper, it really illiustrates how important it can be.

http://www.bellengineering.net/Pages/comments.html
go 1/3 down and look for the headline: Intercooling & Interesting Twists