thanks for the pics Y8s if you can give me specs on the PWR barrel so i can study the capabilities of your setup. Also what size heat exchanger did you place in front of radiator? and if you can post some pics. Thank you very much.

I have a water to air and I like my setup. I sold the supercharger and will be installing a turbo soon. I still have PS and A/C, keeping the a/c and direct routing were some of the reasons why the post owner made this setup.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1409973782

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1409976896


Here's the one I ran back in the day. There is one reason I ran this setup with a turbo: it was cheap. I already had the parts from a supercharger kit I ran before. On a supercharged car it makes sense because of the throttled volume and idle issues with front mounts. On the turbo, it makes no sense in almost any scenario. I can tell you from experience that any decent air/air is lighter and massively more efficient. That being said, it worked great for me on the street, I never had any complaints about it. But I never would have done it if I wasn't building that whole kit myself on a very tight budget. I even still have the damn thing sitting on the shelf in the garage nearly 18 months after selling my NA.

I am liking your setup a lot man. Where is the BOV?

It's the little pipe pointing down right before the intercooler. This picture was taken while I was still building the setup.

that's all I got. I used a small 9 or 10 inch square oil cooler type radiator in front of the right front wheel.

That is the PWR 4x10.
PWR Performance Products | Barrels – Barbed Outlets

Keep in mind I was only running about 4 psi while I had that setup. I pulled it out before I finished setting up boost control. I spent a lot of time chasing leaks and rust on the cheap water tank cap and basically tossed it out of frustration.

Plus if you look at the flow area through the PWR, it's crap. Teenie holes for the air and they protrude beyond the separating wall.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1410051678

Just judging the surface area, that is a tiny intercooler and probably has a huge pressure drop across the two sides. If one was to use four or five of them and then a very large water to air heat exchanger in front of the radiator then things would possibly work as well as an air to air unit. But it would have a much greater expense, weight, level of complexity, all those hoses, etc.

Please also notice the Stillen unit is not oriented in the same way as the AWR unit, either. The Stillen unit has the air entering the wide end of the exchanger and not the narrow end of the unit.

By the way, a friend of a friend named Dominic blew up his VQ35 350z with that complete Stillen kit because it did such a bad job preventing detonation. You should definitely copy it.

I should mention that this wasn't my first air/water setup.

I had one of these:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1410100921

Still a tiny intercooler. The later rally spec cars had a much larger charge-side core.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1410100921

STILL...

a lot of people would ditch them for 6 feet of pipe to a FMIC.

OP

You should totally ignore all the really good advice these smart people are giving you and still put together this craptastic setup that will suck, and feel really cool for being different

That's what I did. Sometimes the process of doing a thing that is unpopular or against the dogma is worth the effort and the results, no matter how unflattering, are their own reward.

Water to Air intercoolers have their place in the car industry and can work well if designed properly. While I have not decided what is my best avenue, all I know is that can fabricate amazing parts, and so at the moment I joined this website to see what has been done and can be done that would be efficient enough at the same time save weight and remove my present intercooler which is located in front of radiator.

Look at this set up.
http://image.superstreetonline.com/f...ntercooler.jpg

Please tell me that's an FMU in the top right corner of that engine bay.

Bay looks like a lot of show swagtasticness. He can't be running real man boost with those couplers.

Looks like a DSM with RWD conversion. Not sure why making fun of his couplers, I have run 30+ psi on ones like that in the past. If this is the car I am thinking of, he is in the 45 to 50 psi range. Blue thing isn't an FMU, his fuel pressure regulator is red, and to the left of that blue thing what ever the hell it is.

Keith

I was joking somewhat about the couplers. I do 30psi on that stuff as well. :bowrofl:

That thing needs some wiggins clamps to class it up. :)