<VV> Cooling Boosted Corvairs Re: You know your Turbo is working when...

[Tony Underwood]

At 11:12 AM 6/20/2009, Test User wrote:
>frank-your mixing apples and oranges. what tom did on the salt flats has no
>bearing on what can be dopne for a street car. assuming tom had some way to
>control the flow rate of water he could have been injecting more water into
>his engine than a street engine could have handled.


I'm thinking along the lines of application requirements vs engine demands...

Street running is never going to involve full throttle max output for 
more than ten seconds at a time unless you're a sadist.   Most 
Corvair engines with any performance mods, especially forced 
induction, won't tolerate much more than that without some serious 
help, via water or intercooling or something, and then it's a mixed 
bag because of the limited amount of cooling area the 'vair engine 
has to offer.



>i've seen/heard v8's out
>there that didn't even fire on all 8 cylinders until well over 150mph. i've
>also seen air to ait intercoolers that were larger than the corvair engine.


Of course those engines being fed by those sort of intercoolers are a 
bit larger than the average 'vair engine...


>why not look at all the different band aids porsche tried in their quest for
>high power and streetable air cooled heads. none really worked until they
>went to water cooled heads.


Scuttlebutt has it that Porsche went to water cooling in order to 
meet smog while still making respectable power, seeing as how they 
had already managed to extract ridiculous hp figures while using a 
boatload of cooling fins on the heads and jugs, much more than the 
average 'vair could ever enjoy.



>i've tried using water injecting quanties until
>the engine would barely run at slow speeds and decided to run a safeguard
>system instead.


There are water injection systems available that meter the water to 
keep this from happening.    Used to be that such systems were hit or 
miss in operation, or only injected water under heavy engine demands.

Of course these were mostly intended to be used in hardcore 
performance aps... ;)   Anymore, with the old hotrodder's 
philosophy/principle of paying close attention to the machinery being 
abandoned in favor of techie solutions, such injection systems are 
falling by the wayside.


It's not that water injection doesn't work;   it's been proven again 
and again to work quite nicely when applied correctly.   One look at 
the aircraft industry's larger piston engine designs and the rather 
phenomenal power those things produced was testimony to what a little 
water could do.    As I recall, not only did the water prevent 
detonation, it also actually helped provide a little extra "push" on 
the piston when the engines were working really hard and combustion 
temps were high enough to instantly boil that extra water into 
steam... although it only happened under certain circumstances 
according to the folks at Wright engineering when they were playing 
around with some of those 3350ci engines that managed to make over 
3500 hp dependably back before exotic engine tricks were the norm and 
electronic fuel injection and ignition controls were everyday.


All this is 2nd hand info...  I've never seen an R3350 on a dyno ;) 
so I have to take their word for it.

Myself... I'd have no worries with a decent water injection system on 
a 'vair and yes I *would* keep an eye on the fluid levels because I'm 
that way.


tony..