Vortech blown 360 dyno day
Moper,
A bodies have small engine compartments, as I'm sure you know. I REALLY wanted a turbocharged 360 instead of a supercharged one, but since I don't weld (don't even own one), and have zero fabrication experience, I decided that a belt-driven supercharger would be more fitting to my limited fabrication "skills" (or, lack of them.)
In that vein, I started looking around for an intercooler setup that I could use with the blower setup I was assembling and discovered "chemical intercooling," which requires very little in the way of fabrication or room.
BTW, the fuel-cell in the trunk is for av-gas, not alcohol. I retained my original tank under the trunk floor, and use it for everyday, daily-driver operation, with 93-octane pump gas in it. My dual-fuel system consists of fuel lines and diverter valves that allow me to run either tank through either of two fuel pumps (a Holley Blue low-pressure -14 psi- pump under the floor) and a high pressure -31 psi- pump in the trunk. That gives me the option of running more spark advance due to the higher octane of the av-gas, at the strip, and daily driving is relegated to the 93 octane gas in the OEM tank, using more spark retard. It's a 2-minute job to switch tanks and pumps; just turn some diverter-valve handles, and two switches; one on, one off. That's what all that hose in the trunk is all about.
The Snowperformance Boost Cooler Stage I alcohol injector consists of a 140 psi "sprayer" that injects a fine spray of alcohol into the incoming pressurized air that has been heated, unfortunately, by the blower's impeller. The spray takes a lot of the heat back out of it, just like an intercooler, and adds some high-octane alcohol as "fuel" in the process. Air-to-air intercoolers are like little radiators, and require a place, usually in front of the radiator. to get air flow for charge cooling. My particular car just didn't have any room behind the radiator to mount an intercooler. At least, that's how it appeared to me. So, I went to
http://www.snowperformance.net/ and looked at their chemical intercoolers and decided that one of their Stage I units might be just what I needed to keep the demons of detonation away. That, along with the MSD BoostMaster spark retard unit seems to be working, for the moment. I have 6 drag strip runs and 3 dyno pulls on it and haven't seen evidence of any engine damage so far. With OEM cast pistons and stock, composition head gaskets, I can't afford even "trace" detonation under boost, as I'm sure you're aware.
The Boost Cooler was a very easy installation and takes up very little room. It consists of a 12-volt pump about the size of a regular can of beans, and an alky tank, which is actually a windshield washer reservoir, and some small-diameter tubing to connect the pump to the blower discharge pipe. There's a Hobbs (adjustable pressure) switch that turns the pump on and off at your choice of boost pressures (I have mine set to 3 psi of boost), and that's it except for an indicator light for the dash that lights up when it's spraying. The spray comes from a nozzle desighnes to atomize the alcohol, and has a jet behind it, for volume adjustment. I guess bigger, more powerful engines can use more alcohol.
If I had room for a regular intercooler, I might have used one, but after reading the reports on chemical intercooling, with a low-boost application like this, I'm not really sure which is best. This seems to do the job, so far.
Thanks for your interest!