Does anyone know a good reason why the chargecooler uses engine coolant in an otherwise completely separate system? It has a chargecooler, radiator, separate pipes, and it's own pump, but yet it takes it's water from the radiator, which seems an odd choice - engine coolant isn't exactly....cool, when the engine is up to temperature.

Surely the charge cooler would be much more efficient if it was using separate coolant, which wasn't as hot as the engine coolant?

Or am I missing something fundamental here?

 

It's clearly good enough since they used it over best part of 10 years on multiple car models.

If you do lots of track racing or the like it's worth improving, as their racing teams do.

 

First everything you said is true. But if you study and work on the system what you will find is they are only connected in the most minor way.

The intercooler fluid does not rise and fall with engine temperature. It is separated almost completely and there is only one small connection between the two systems. I think they only connected them so you could fill the radiator and it would also fill the intercoolers.

As JagV8 said if you want to go all out then yes split the intercooler.

But do some checks yourself. It's surprising how cool the intercoolers are when the engine is running.
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