Is there a way, or someone who can test the flow restrictions of Air to Water, Air to Air Intercoolers? I would like to have this done (BEFORE) I go thru the hassle of the install. Thanks Rod

 

Simple test is to make a couple of TALL u-tube manometers from plastic tubing mounted on a couple of 2x4 boards 6 feet tall.
Hook up a vacuum cleaner hose to a plumbers plastic ball valve (so you can control the test pressure). drill a 1/8" pipe nipple into a couple of PCV sections of pipe that match the inlet and outlet of the inter-cooler you are testing.

So your hook-up will look like this: Vacuum cleaner, then ball valve, then hose, then plastic pipe at exit of inter-cooler (with vacuum nipple), Inter-cooler, a second plastic pipe at entrance to inter-cooler (with vacuum nipple), and finally a radiused entry.

So you hook up the manometers so that one manometer goes to each vacuum nipple (one manometer on each side of the inter-cooler).

Barely open up the ball valve and watch the water go down on one leg of the manometer and up on the opposite side of the manometer.
The one closest to the ball valve. This will tell you the suction pressure that the inter-cooler is seeing from the vacuum cleaner.

The other manometer will be reading a lower water rise vs the first one because there is a restriction in the inter-cooler.

A good restriction across an inter-cooler is about 1 psi or 27.5" of water movement on a manometer.

So if your two home-made manometers have more difference vs 27.5" for a good inter-cooler then you can find out how much the restriction is.

If it is two psi restriction the manometers will be different by 55 inches of water.

Tom V.

 

I have learned a fair bit about carburetors using a wet-or-dry shop vac, with a speed control with a FoMoCo MAF with a voltmeter to measure air flow, and water manometers to measure head and booster signal, T-slot signal, etc.

With the wet-or-dry shop vac you can flow with water and compare different bleed and booster arrangements and observe the discharge patterns, see (and hear) the slugging flow that occurs when too much emulsion air is introduced using too many or too large main well bleeds. Fun stuff.

The Ford shop manuals have specifications of air flow in Volts per g/sec for the MAF units used in the late 80’s and newer. I accumulated several of them but I think the ones I used the most were for 351 and 460 PU trucks.