Quote:
Originally Posted by OliverSedlacek
I think there's quite a lot of aero benefit to be squeezed out the cooling system, mostly by carefully ducting the air to and from the heat exchanger. One goal has to be to reduce the size of the radiator to its practical minimum. Does an electric water pump help at all? I'm thinking that the decoupling of the water pump speed from the engine speed should allow for quite a lot of improvement, if done right!
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I think there's a good bit of POTENTIAL from an electric water pump that can be PWM controlled and having advanced control over both the water pump and electric fan control.
Davies Craig has done a lot of work in this space and hold some patents that probably shouldn't have ever been issued, but the ability to run maximum engine heat at highway cruise by slowing down the water pump and fans -WILL improve highway MPG, and then you still have the ability to spin them as fast as possible when the cooling is needed.
-A lot of guys running Ethanol / Methanol also use the Davies Craig electric water pump and controllers so that their engines heat up quicker to help deal with cold running temps and ethanol / methanol.
Like OilPan4 said, though in a performance application an electric water pump can't hope to cool as well as a mechanical pump and will generate far less pressure. -For low engine RPM cooling, electric water pumps are wonderful, though. (Although their reliability / max lifetime is pretty pathetic compared to their mechanical counterparts.)
-I increasingly like the idea of just running an efficient mechanical pump and using brushless fans with advanced PWM control and /or grill shutters like many of the OEMs are doing to control temps intelligently. (The cost and lack of reliability in electric pumps makes them a tough sell...)
Adam