Hi

Has anybody ever thought about a water cooling system for their buggies? I just found a company that makes small pumps and radiators here

http://www.micropumps.co.uk/

Cheers

Why would you use water cooling on a buggy? if you wanted to cool an engine down by some means then Air cooling via a fan blade would seem more apropriate. Cant say i would want to but Hey! some one may of.

Give it a go and lut us know how it works. :D

Just why on a nitro boat yeah but on a truck or land going thing you have air mans best friend.

Water pump means weight and more to go wrong if your struggling with the engine being to hot try riching it up a little or buying a gas cooler i did just for the hell of it and to be honest it does cool it down on long run times.

But please please please forget the water idea only reason they have them in boats is because the engine is in a virtually sealed area water on a buggy could go seriously wrong dry up and sieze your engine.

Making it cooler won't make any difference to the performance, just adds weight... It'd be a cool gadget but thats about it.

You obviously don't know who this guy is...

Richard Weatherley...

He designed the Pedator line of 10th Buggy's. It was a revelation when first released and something like 15 years later is still totally different to any other out there.

He sold that business and now concentrates on other things like this.

He actually bought out this as a 10th TC system and it was Awesome ! Very Efficiant and Clever. Unfortunately nowadyas with the Brushless technology, there really isn't the need for them. Maybe in the bigger stuff...

The quality etc of his stuff is second to none.


:clap: :clap: :clap:

Water cooling your engine is much more efficient than air cooling. You can run your engine much leaner and it will give more power.

I am fitting a CMB 7.5cc marine engine to my speed car so will need to fit the colling system. I'll let you know how it performs

As for the weight I'm sure you can get the total weight of the car to around the legal race limit even with the cooling system fitted.

Cheers

Oh that makes much more sense, on a marine engine! I assumed you were thinking of using it on a conventional air cooled car engine :joker: Now that wouldn't work, you'd need to make a new block and head with water galleries in it to make any decent effect on the temps :P
I dunno about using it in an off-road application though, even normal full size rads and intercoolers get seriously affected by dirt/ mud, let alone something even smaller & finer. I don't think it'd work for long.
On-road, should be ok. I know someone who's using a fluid cooling set-up on a 1/10 electric drift car, to be honest it doesn't really need it, but its cool to look at :joker: I might try and find out if its that system...

I can't see why it wouldnt work on an offroad car. The rad and fan etc will be under the body so will be protected from the mud etc..

You can install a water cooling head on a road engine and it should work well.

Cheers

Water cooling makes sense when what you need cool is in a position where it's difficult to get air, for example inside a desktop PC case.

In an RC car, I reckon the difference a water cooling system will make is minimal as you never properly cover the engine: shells aren't water tight and let the air flow around inside.

As Rossy said it makes sense with boats, but presumably only because it uses the water on which it floats, instead of a closed radiator system (I may be wrong).

I think you'll be much better off cooling the engine directly with air instead of adding the extra step of cooling water.

What WOULD be interesting is an air conditioning unit, much like a fridge, which reduces the engine's temperature below that of the surrounding air. You would be able to set it's thermostat exactly at the optimal running temperature for the engine :)

In order to get sufficient airflow to the rad you can't avoid leaving it susceptible to dirt. In bone dry conditions it probably won't be a problem but mud will render it useless. I've had a lot of experience with this issue during my years in rallying, dirt goes pretty much everywhere the air does.

Yeah i can vouch for this i raced mini's for 2years and were ever air is going to get mud is to so basically your rendering your radiator useless not for offraod use stick to what they design and thats air cooled.

Maybe make one for dry mudless conditions thats easily detachable?

Another option would be to find an alternative to a conventional radiator, something that won't clog up...
Back in the day race car builders used to use the tubing in the cars' chassis as pipework for fluids, usually oil and water, to and from coolers at the front (my boss's Lotus 23 still has the flared ends on the spaceframe :lol: ). It was potentially brilliant but a few people crashed them and got scolded, so they banned it. :blink:
It would be cool to make a small roll-cage type structure and run fluid through that... Aluminium tubing would dissipate the heat well and still have a bit of "give" to prevent it cracking easily... Or even use an alloy chassis as a big heatsink?

My car's chassis gets rather warm around where the engine sits, so using that as a heat sink I think is a bad idea, but the roll cage rounds genius!

I have ordered the parts and will give te system a test on my CMB engine. I'll post some pics and vids and let you know how well it works

Cheers

i dont see how this will cool the car better then air. does anyone have pics of how these are set up? from my expirience wih computer water cooling you need a big resovior for the water otherwise the water in a closed curcit ends up getting just as warm as the engine, all i can see is it will help the engine to stop fluctuating the temperature as much,

so you would need a pump that can push water through it very quickley and also the radiator would need very good airflow. surely if it was possible it would be better to have a bigger heatsink on the engine, thus larger surface area and larger surface area for the air to flow over? unless you were trying to slow the fluctuation of temperature

.........................unless you were to change from water to nitrogen :rofl:

The latent heat of water is 20 times that of air so the water can abosorb more heat and transfer this to the radiator. This is 20 times more efficient than air cooling so you can run your engine cooler with a leaner setting giving more power

Ziggy that's irrelevant.

You still have to transfer the heat from:
1. What is originally hot
2. To water
3. Through the heatsink
4. Into the air

This is, as I already said, useful if what is hot is in a difficult location. Otherwise you might as well skip one of the steps:
1. What is originally hot
2. Through the heatsink
3. Into the air

ALso, just because an engine is cool doesn't mean it'll run better. Each engine has an optimal temperature and if your cooling system was too efficient, you'd need a thermostat to cut it out now and then.

The transfer of heat is dependant on the contact area. The water can soak up 20 time more heat than the heat sink head then the contact area of the water in the radiator is much more than the contact area of the cylinder head to the heat sink. This allows the heat to be dissipated into the air much quicker than using a heat sink alone. Therefore its very relevant

A large portion of the cooling in a glow engine is the evaporation of the unburnt methanol fuel in the cylinder. The transfer ports are timed do there is mixture flow across the cylinder into the exaust just before it closes on the up stroke.

If you cool the engine more effectively you can run the engine leaner and this produces more power.

Cheers

How can you say its irrelevant...

You need to look up why overclockers watercool PC's.

This is irrelevant. The ability that water has to transfer heat is negligible when you remember that it is air against the heat sink that will be cooling the water afterwards, if your radiator is useless then you'll have created a warm loop of water, which warms up really quickly.

You will always be cooling the engine with air, even today's 1:1 cars are cooled with air, except the antifreeze acts as a transporter of heat from the relatively enclosed engine to a radiator at the front of the car.

Only now have you mentioned the surface area of the heat sink, which is the most important part. That part is relevant.

I apologise if I've come across as being hostile :)

even if it was to prove to do the job the what about your glow plug? would it really let you lean it off enough to make it worth while after taking in to acount the amount of extra weight thats going to slow your car down?

am i right in thinking the cooling system is an adition to the car and that it also dosnt replaces engine or heatsink?

I have the water cooling system on the car and it works great. I havent had the engine on for long as the batteries ran out while trying to start the motor. I plan to run it today.

The water pump is about the size of the end om my little finger and the radiator is a but larger than a box of matches (Swan!).

I'll post pics later

Cheers

:cool2:

Glad you got it on there mate.

You going to Avon Park soon ?

Hi,

On the subject of water cooled engines, how about this from Italian manufacturer Grossi -

http://66.196.80.202/babelfish/translate_u...fstoryid%3d1528

Looks very interesting.