I would trade the choice of watercooling/air cooling instead of choosing the size of intercooler. Literally, there is only one intercooler size that is optimum and there is no case in selecting a bigger or smaller intercooler.
Water cooling adds a little more power but is more expensive, heavier and requires more engineering time, which is a nice tradeoff when considering to chose between one and the other.
I agree. I actually use mostly A-A intercoolers since theyâre cheaper and lighter, and most of my applications donât need the extra performance. Maybe make the W-A intercoolers a little heavier and more expensive, and nerf the octane boost a little. Meanwhile the intercooler size really is a pointless decision, as Sillyworld said. It should just be a slider, or maybe even just automatically set the optimal size since thereâs basically no point in choosing anything else.
Automatic selection of cooler size would require the game to know exactly what youâre building (Eco vs. mobile power station). There may be an ideal size based on the turbo profile, but not on engine size itself. I only ever used air-air on super-rubbish not-so eco small ones, but thatâs just me.
Umm, not really. I didnât encounter any situation where an intercooler not providing the maximal flow would be optimal - so if the game would just choose the smallest size providing 100% flow it would probably be perfect for any build, no matter if it was an eco box or a supercar.
To qualify my above:
Inline 4 1.5Lt âecoâ preset turbo
Tiny a-a turned out to be better than a large a-a.
If thatâs in the same vein as what youâre outlining, Iâll just shut up.
In what way âbetterâ? I guess just lighter, cheaper and less limiting to throttle response, while offering the same (maximum needed) flow, isnât it?
Iâve had occasions where a non-optimal intercooler size led to fitting into a Production Unit or Engineering Time restriction without a significant reduction in engine performance. Sometimes, to fit in that budget range, you need a sub-optimal airflow. A 10 horsepower difference didnât hurt the car, and if we had a pure âThis is the exact intercooler you need, take it or leave itâ setup, I would have had to compromise even further just to fit the challenge restriction.
That said, I would actually like to see a few years in the game where turbos are a thing, but intercoolers arenât available for them. A lot of the early turbo cars were âhot airâ cars, lacking any form of intercooler and just feeding their hot compressed air to the engine.
There is a bit of an Issue with that, most of the basics of forced induction were invented for piston aircraft decades before they showed up in cars. Perhaps they could be prohibitively expensive in the early years. Would also be cool if there were options for side mount and top mount intercoolers as well.
They should also technically be called âaftercoolersâ, because âintercoolerâ typically means it goes between two compressor stages, but I guess thatâs why some people just call them charge air coolers (even though I donât think it becomes charge air until itâs mixed with fuel?).
Once in awhile a non intercooled car will still be released, the Evora S and all the V6 exiges donât have charge air coolers.
I think we can all agree, what we really need is water/meth injection. =P
Yeah, the first american (maybe world wide?) factory turbocharged car had this. Cheap charge cooling for a maintenance hit?