Originally Posted by Fabrik8
Air to air is easier to make efficient and usually way cheaper. You can get a lot of bang for your buck with a front mount air/air setup and there's no maintanance and nothing to fail really. You add more weight, complexity, and cost with an air/water setup, and there are more things to fail. That's not to say there aren't some good reasons to have an air/water setup, but for street cars it's a hard thing to justify. You have to have a radiator, charge cooler, header tank, pump, coolant lines, charge tubing, etc. instead of just the intercooler and charge piping for something like a front mount air/air.
It really depends on the setup and the car, but I'd find it hard to lean on the side of the air/water for most situations. It's just really hard to beat an air/air for efficiency most of the time..
That being said, I'm going to replace my top mount WRX intercooler with a air/water unit this summer if I can scrape the money together. Why? I like to fabricate stuff.. If I were sane I'd just buy a bigger top mount or front mount like the rest of the world.
So to answer your question, my opinion would be a bigger air to air setup..
I already have an air to air setup, and one of the reasons i dont want to go with a bigger air to air is because i dont want to do away with my fog lights. I was also under the assumption that all i would really need is a heat exchanger like an oil cooler, water pump, fuel cell or some tank to hold water, coolant lines, and then i could convert my existing Intercooler piping to work with the air to water intercooler. And in the end i figured it would only be a tad bit more than a nice air to air intercooler.
Originally Posted by blah
Is it for your hatch? And do you even drive it on the street anymore or is it just a drag car?
Yes this is for my hatch, and i still plan on driving it on the street, but i might slack down on how much i drive it. Then again knowing myself i probably wouldnt drive it any less lol
I also know that air to water is not really good for driving on the street because the water heats up. I figured if i had a decent heat exchanger and a nice size resevoir to hold more water that i wouldnt have that problem. I mean Josh MR2 2NR didnt have a problem and the superchargers for s2ks have air to water intercooler setups. The only downside im seeing is having a water tank somewhere. But thats also why i made this thread to see if there is more to it that i do not know about.