Alan

What are the pros and cons of each?

NitroGlycerin

Air to air is generally cheaper, lighter, and requires less maintenance. Water to air can be more effective at reducing charge temps, sometimes below ambient if cold liquid is used.

My $.02

-Mike

InsaneCivicCoupe

for a street car go air-air... liquid-air is not worth the hassle on the street but can pay off on the track by drastically reducing your intake temps.... basically what Nitro said...... my vote: air-air

Slash

well some cars such as MR2's need to use liquid to air just for the reason of space constraints.. cant really run like 15 feet of piping for an FMIC and the stock mounting area is redicilously small, even with a trunk mount ya lose most of your storage space for 1/2 assed cooling. So for those kinda people with space constraints, liquid to air is a great solution

SyTyArchives

It all depends on how the application is executed.

Air/water:
you need a signifigant heat exchanger. Any heat sources near any of the lines will effect the water temp. Once stopped, your bound to heat-soak the water. It takes a lot more time to cool down a gallon or two of water then just the air/air heat exchanger.
If you take measures, with fans and large heat exchangers, w/a can work well on the street. But if you flog it, then let it sit while your munchin a burger, expect that water to be nice and toasty when you start her up again.

However, at the track its hard to beat. Because you can super cool the liquid with ice and other means.


Air/Air:
Great for jump in and stab it situations. The only thing getting hot is the piping and the heat exchanger. Although an issue to concern yourself with, measures to keep the piping away or sheild it from heat sources help a lot. No need to cool down lots of water, and you'll get pretty consistant intake temps based on ambient air temp.

A/A can be super cooled as well, but you'd need to use a sprayer/fogger of sorts to spray a compressed gas onto the heat exchanger. (basically replacing the ambiant air flowing over it with colder air)

Its really a toss up, it seems like whatever a turbo car came with, aftermaret preference is for the oposite method.

flubyux2

Drag car would do well w/ a Liquid/Air intercooler. its easy to acheive greater than 100% efficiency on an Liquid/Air intercooler. fill it w/ ice and water, you can chill the air below the ambient temp.

for a street driven car, you would need a resivoir as well as heat exchangers to remove the heat from the "liquid coolant" after it removes the heat from the air intercooler. Its more weight and compclication on a street driven car and i wouldnt say its worth the hassle or weight penalties.

for ease of use and installaiton as well as operation, air/air is the way to go. If you are putting more heat out that the intercooler can handle, you can always add a water sprayer to the front of the IC and use a 50/50 mix of water and alky to help chill it out... like Celica GT4's and EVO's that come w/ it stock.

to chill the air on an Air/air lower than ambient, you would need one of those NX CO2 spray bar dealys... but spraying liquid CO2 onto your IC core and allowing it to build up frost/dry ice on there is not the best for aluminium... rapid/repeated cyclings of extreme heat and cold can severely reduce the malleability of aluminum and make it real brittle.. it fatigues the metal and it wont be able to handle dings and dents very well in the future and could very easily lead to cracking.

joeyk

most race cars are now going to a air/air because it is alot more efficent and can move more cfm , liguid/air is very heavy and most readings from data loggers only read the intake air getting to ambient or a few deg cooler , nothing a co2 cooler couldnt do .

InsaneCivicCoupe

i could not imagine havin an air/water IC on a street driven car... i couldnt stand takin a long trip and havin to get off every hour or so to replace the liquid in the cooler... too much pain for my ass to handle.... i think on a street car air/air is THEE shit.....

0HP930

Dude, its a cooling system like your radiator.

I don't know why you think it would run out of coolant.

Also water to air is more efficient since most ICs act as short term heat sinks and water can absorb a lot more heat than aluminum.

As already stated the only downside to water/air intercoolers are weight and complexity.