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