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Trunk ice box install help

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Unholy707

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Thread Starter #21
I come across a lot of ice tank setups that are not optimized in routing or flow and the results I see are lack luster in those cases.

With that said, here's how I would set things up.

If keeping the heat exchangers in then I would disconnect the bottom hose going into the supercharger. This line will now return to the tank, you can modify or replace this section of hose depending on how you decide to route the lines from there.

The feed line will run from the tank into to the supercharger input lower port. Everything else would remain the same.

You can run the lines either underneath the car or with a lot more work, through the cabin into bulkhead fittings on the firewall. Use heat protective wraps when routing anywhere close to heat sources like headers/exhaust.

This will retain the factory pump which I feel helps to overcome the additional head pressure of going through all the extra loops and turns.

For racing at the track, if you set it up to be able to turn off all water pumps until it's time to start up the car before going through the water box, most of the ice you load up before hand will still be there for your pass. Ice can last for over an hour in the tank in the staging lanes if you can turn off all pumps until it's time to use it.

When leaving pumps off in staging lanes, it's recommended to occasionally run them for brief moments to lessen the shock later when you turn it on. Either that or modulate them until you're comfortable with letting it run full time before pulling up to make your pass. I generally prefer the 2nd method myself. The sudden cold temperature shock has been known to cause intercooler bricks to crack and spring a leak. Pretty rare but some simple procedural steps and you can minimize risk here to almost nothing.

If you bypass or delete your heat exchangers then you can get away with a single water pump but it's going to get real hot if you drive around without ice for extended time.

Having heat exchangers bypassed or not only affects head pressure. With heat exchangers in, you may have less flow which can in turn lead to less heat extraction from the intercooler bricks. That's why I recommend keeping the factory pump in that scenario. I also have not found a "limit" yet on having too much flow in terms of how it affects IAT's. The more flow I can get, the lower my IAT's have generally been as long as there's enough ice water capacity to feed the supercharger during the run. I generally run 5-7 gallons myself which is plenty. If you're running less water capacity then you'll run out of ice water sooner with more flow which can lead to higher IAT's later in the run. In such scenarios, less flow might actually be better overall. Lots of factors at play and only real world testing will reveal what's actually best for a particular setup.

Here are some common routing or setup mistakes I see a lot.

Ice tank is plumbed to feed into heat exchangers first before going into the supercharger. Ice cold water will warm up going through the heat exchangers leading to warmer coolant feeding into the blower.

Kinks in the water lines restricting flow. Flow restrictions will result in a sharp rise in IAT's, worst than stock. It may start off good but then shoots to over 200F by end of the pass because of some sort of severe restriction in flow.

Air locked system, this shouldn't occur if you have a pump at the rear of the tank that will always have water to push through the system. I've seen some weird ice tank setups though where the pump is remotely located and would cease to pump water under hard acceleration.

Insufficient flow due to excessive head pressure. It works despite this but it's not as good as it could be.

Factory reservoir not addressed causing air to enter system and cause an air lock. The factory reservoir tends to suck air in through the radiator cap with rapid temp changes occurring in the system. You can also cap off the pressure cap vent port if you want to keep the reservoir for a factory look and this usually stops it from happening.

Here's a chart of my IAT's (blue line) on one of my passes this year. This was with a 3.8L Whipple making 24-26 psi, ambient was 82F, no nitrous.

View attachment 112514

ICT 45F (didn't change until after the pass)
Starting IAT 72F
Peak IAT 90F just over 6 seconds into the run
End IAT 86F

For MAT, it calculates about 20 degrees higher than IAT at these lower temps with ending MAT at 104F.

I use a 7 gallon ice tank with a EWP150 on the tank and the factory pump up front.
Absolutely amazing info, you are the man Z! Thank you so much for all of the info and guidance. As always, this is exactly what I was looking for.
 


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#22
I come across a lot of ice tank setups that are not optimized in routing or flow and the results I see are lack luster in those cases.

With that said, here's how I would set things up.

If keeping the heat exchangers in then I would disconnect the bottom hose going into the supercharger. This line will now return to the tank, you can modify or replace this section of hose depending on how you decide to route the lines from there.

The feed line will run from the tank into to the supercharger input lower port. Everything else would remain the same.

You can run the lines either underneath the car or with a lot more work, through the cabin into bulkhead fittings on the firewall. Use heat protective wraps when routing anywhere close to heat sources like headers/exhaust.

This will retain the factory pump which I feel helps to overcome the additional head pressure of going through all the extra loops and turns.

For racing at the track, if you set it up to be able to turn off all water pumps until it's time to start up the car before going through the water box, most of the ice you load up before hand will still be there for your pass. Ice can last for over an hour in the tank in the staging lanes if you can turn off all pumps until it's time to use it.

When leaving pumps off in staging lanes, it's recommended to occasionally run them for brief moments to lessen the shock later when you turn it on. Either that or modulate them until you're comfortable with letting it run full time before pulling up to make your pass. I generally prefer the 2nd method myself. The sudden cold temperature shock has been known to cause intercooler bricks to crack and spring a leak. Pretty rare but some simple procedural steps and you can minimize risk here to almost nothing.

If you bypass or delete your heat exchangers then you can get away with a single water pump but it's going to get real hot if you drive around without ice for extended time.

Having heat exchangers bypassed or not only affects head pressure. With heat exchangers in, you may have less flow which can in turn lead to less heat extraction from the intercooler bricks. That's why I recommend keeping the factory pump in that scenario. I also have not found a "limit" yet on having too much flow in terms of how it affects IAT's. The more flow I can get, the lower my IAT's have generally been as long as there's enough ice water capacity to feed the supercharger during the run. I generally run 5-7 gallons myself which is plenty. If you're running less water capacity then you'll run out of ice water sooner with more flow which can lead to higher IAT's later in the run. In such scenarios, less flow might actually be better overall. Lots of factors at play and only real world testing will reveal what's actually best for a particular setup.

Here are some common routing or setup mistakes I see a lot.

Ice tank is plumbed to feed into heat exchangers first before going into the supercharger. Ice cold water will warm up going through the heat exchangers leading to warmer coolant feeding into the blower.

Kinks in the water lines restricting flow. Flow restrictions will result in a sharp rise in IAT's, worst than stock. It may start off good but then shoots to over 200F by end of the pass because of some sort of severe restriction in flow.

Air locked system, this shouldn't occur if you have a pump at the rear of the tank that will always have water to push through the system. I've seen some weird ice tank setups though where the pump is remotely located and would cease to pump water under hard acceleration.

Insufficient flow due to excessive head pressure. It works despite this but it's not as good as it could be.

Factory reservoir not addressed causing air to enter system and cause an air lock. The factory reservoir tends to suck air in through the radiator cap with rapid temp changes occurring in the system. You can also cap off the pressure cap vent port if you want to keep the reservoir for a factory look and this usually stops it from happening.

Here's a chart of my IAT's (blue line) on one of my passes this year. This was with a 3.8L Whipple making 24-26 psi, ambient was 82F, no nitrous.

View attachment 112514

ICT 45F (didn't change until after the pass)
Starting IAT 72F
Peak IAT 90F just over 6 seconds into the run
End IAT 86F

For MAT, it calculates about 20 degrees higher than IAT at these lower temps with ending MAT at 104F.

I use a 7 gallon ice tank with a EWP150 on the tank and the factory pump up front.
GREAT READ Z
 


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#23
Good stuff. As fur bee in dis cusion in thank youz. Have been a chiller machanic fer 40 ears and nava learn it all. Thank you.
 


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#24
exactly like Z said, plumb the ice tank directly to the feed line of the blower, return back to the ice tank after tis gone through the factory HE, leave the system factory.
 


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#25
I’ve spent some time a while back looking for pre formed 3/4” hoses to help with routing in tight spots. These are my goto’s but there may be better ones that you can buy and cut up. You can also purchase hose fittings of varying degrees to use to connect around bends and curves. Less likely to leak and easier to service.

IMG_7120.png IMG_7121.png IMG_7122.png vpe-22906_xl.jpg
 


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#26
I’ve spent some time a while back looking for pre formed 3/4” hoses to help with routing in tight spots. These are my goto’s but there may be better ones that you can buy and cut up. You can also purchase hose fittings of varying degrees to use to connect around bends and curves. Less likely to leak and easier to service.

View attachment 112543 View attachment 112544 View attachment 112545 View attachment 112546
more great information
 


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#27
It seems you gave up on this. My half-moon one is mounted in the trunk. The original installer had the motor sitting too high in the trunk and it eventually locked. The second mechanic fabricated some welds and has the motor sitting way below the water line from the box. It works great. The thing I do worry about are the hoses by the rails of the car. One puncture and IATS will go up on the intercooler. I do not use the stock intercooler motor. It was removed. I do not use the ice anymore. It is a pain in the Ars. But even in the desert the water temperature of the 5-gallon cooler stays lower than stock. Around 100-110 after warming up. Would I do it again? No. But it is working and is very efficient. My motor goes on when the push button is on the run position. I check the fluid once a week and it seems to be holding up. I am sure the chiller is much better.
 


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Thread Starter #28
Yeah, I went with a chiller
 


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Thread Starter #29
IMG_1818.jpeg
 


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Thread Starter #30
No
It seems you gave up on this. My half-moon one is mounted in the trunk. The original installer had the motor sitting too high in the trunk and it eventually locked. The second mechanic fabricated some welds and has the motor sitting way below the water line from the box. It works great. The thing I do worry about are the hoses by the rails of the car. One puncture and IATS will go up on the intercooler. I do not use the stock intercooler motor. It was removed. I do not use the ice anymore. It is a pain in the Ars. But even in the desert the water temperature of the 5-gallon cooler stays lower than stock. Around 100-110 after warming up. Would I do it again? No. But it is working and is very efficient. My motor goes on when the push button is on the run position. I check the fluid once a week and it seems to be holding up. I am sure the chiller is much better.
No regrets
 


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#31
Jon didn't like the extra weight of the ice box and it didn't seem to help much. Only way I see a chiller helping is if you run in the summer with no cool down time. If the chiller worked going down the track then it would be worth while
 


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Thread Starter #32
It
Jon didn't like the extra weight of the ice box and it didn't seem to help much. Only way I see a chiller helping is if you run in the summer with no cool down time. If the chiller worked going down the track then it would be worth while
it does. My coolant temp was only at 50 degrees at the end of the pass. MAT 130. Didn’t pull any timing for mat. And I have no aux tank. 90 degrees out. It’s always summer here. Before, the car would pull a few degrees at the top end for IAT. You don’t need it chilling the fluid during the pass, won’t heat it enough during the pass
 


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Thread Starter #33
I ran back to back to back all 9.8 same mph. Chiller works if you do it right (r1234yf). I was a skeptic, not anymore.
 


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#34
It
it does. My coolant temp was only at 50 degrees at the end of the pass. MAT 130. Didn’t pull any timing for mat. And I have no aux tank. 90 degrees out. It’s always summer here. Before, the car would pull a few degrees at the top end for IAT
It doesn't work going down the track only before your pass
 


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Thread Starter #35
Your IATs are hot when you’re standing still. Go WOT and they plunge
 


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Thread Starter #36
It doesn't work going down the track only before your pass
I edited my post once I realized what you were saying. It doesn’t need to.
 


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#37
Like I said if you are running in the summer (90) then it should help. Only time I could be running in that high of temps would be at nmca in July. Neither then that I only run when the temps and da are good
 


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Thread Starter #38
Like I said if you are running in the summer (90) then it should help. Only time I could be running in that high of temps would be at nmca in July. Neither then that I only run when the temps and da are good
See I don’t agree with the whole DA chaser thing. Why not enjoy your car and have it run the same thing regardless of the weather
 


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Thread Starter #39
Chiller for me was a good investment, although I still think it’s over priced. And I can put the stock ac lines back on and sell it if I ever wanted to. With ac off and chiller bypassed going through t st idk heat exchanger it lowers temps as good as it did before. But I usually always have the ac on
 


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#40
See I don’t agree with the whole DA chaser thing. Why not enjoy your car and have it run the same thing regardless of the weather
I enjoy my car everyday so the track is where ever I want it to be:LOL: also I dont see you running 9.5 in 0 da and with chiller running 9.5 in 3000 da
 




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