Does anyone have any info (or could take an educated guess) about the outlet temps of a typical radiator cooling system? I know the coolant temp from the temp sensor would be where the coolant is exiting the engine/entering the radiator.

What i am interested in is how much the radiator cools the water as it flows through. I'm in the process of building a twin turbo system with some flipped manifolds, and I would rather use a water/air intercooler than an air/air unit.

Most setups like this will use a separate cooling circuit with a small pump to circulate the water. I want to plumb mine into the stock cooling system, but i want to but it at the coolest point. Common sense says this is the lower radiator hose. If the temps are low enough (120ºF??) , that location would provide some massive flow.

So, has anyone ever looked at this? I guess i could borrow a thermocouple from work and check it out myself . . . but i would have to put the whole car back together

 

In my up-close and personal experiances with hot coolant (the last month) id say the coolest it would get would be between 130-150 degress...ive taken a few blown hoses (upper and lower) to the face...and i can tell you, itll only burn for a few seconds lol....the steam is what will severly burn you, not the coolant itself....the hottest point (outside the motor) is obviously right at the thermostat...


im trying to picture what your tryin to do and im afraid i cant...you plan to use the stock system routing, with upgraded radiataor and such i assume

 

Ok, heres a quick pic of kind of what i want to do. The radiator and fans would be upgraded to "overcool" the water coming from the radiator, so it would be a normal temp when it entered the block.

This may not work, as there will only be significant heat transfer through the IC during boost. I dont know how the engine would like such wildly fluctuating temperatures.

 

That's a good idea but there's not one answer. Right now my outlet temps are usually between 60*F and 80*F but that's only while driving down the road and only because it's below 20*F temp outside right now.

It would not work very well at all any other time and would actually work against you in warm weather at WOT. You'd overheat both systems because heat from the boost would drive engine coolant temps up higher than normal.

Better to keep the two systems separated IMO. Didn't mean to be a downer on what seems like a great idea but after thinking it through & actually monitoring my own coolant temps for so long I can't see it working well.

 

Yeah, thats kind of what i was thinking. It would probably never be cool enough to be effective, but i was thinking it would add heat to the charge air at anything but full boost.

. . . Seemed like a good idea at the time, but i agree it has more cons than pros

I'll probably just aim for a big ol' air/air intercooler like a super duty powerstroke or the like. I dont really want the cost/complexity of building and maintaining a water circuit.

What do you guys think about running a smaller than ideal IC just for packaging/cost reasons, and adding water injection set at, say, 6 psi so it would only come on when the air/air unit would poop out?