IC Coolant Tank
I’ve been asked by a few forum members about my tank separation mod, and especially why I now say that you don’t need a new IC "circulation" tank like the one I had fabbed and installed.
First - - Let’s look at the stock “surge” tank. In the picture below you can see three of the cambers. These chambers are separated by a wall on all four sides (there are three more chambers on the backside) with one small 1/4” diameter hole on the bottom of each wall for the fluid to interconnect. There is no way you could circulate fluid through this tank. This tank is used for nothing more then a place for the coolant (engine & IC) to expand into when it gets hot, and to draw coolant from when the coolant cools down and to add fluid to the system when needed. (Has anyone lost any coolant yet?) This is explained pretty well in the maintenance manual
SurgeTank.jpg
I chose to fab a “circulation” tank for my system with the idea that I could “ICE” down the coolant to provide some colder-then-ambient air temps. This idea failed because the HE would warm the chilled coolant up very quickly. (But the bling-bling still looks good with the rest of the engine polishing I had done)
What I did learn from all this is that the IC coolant is going to equalize somewhere between the outside air temp at the HE and the intake air temp at the IC once the engine coolant is no longer a factor. Just removing the engine coolant out of the factor - - droped my IC coolant temps by 50+ degrees and dropped my IAT's by 25 – 30 Deg. This gives me back some timing. And that’s what I’d like to share with you.
Also – the HE and IC are only so efficient at transferring heat. In my case the IC coolant stays about 25deg above ambient outside temp. My IC coolant never seems to get hotter then that – I can stick my finger in my IC coolant at anytime without issue. Also my IAT gauge now reads about 35-40 deg above ambient OAT when cruzing and will jump another 25-35 deg above that when I’m boosting hard – then come back down when off the boost.
So to save you money, time, re-routing a ton of hoses, installing a smaller battery or giving up valuable trunk space, you can do this the easy way and get the same results.
Last edited by BrianBrave; 08-16-2008 at 10:55 PM.