Are there any racers here using a cool can on there fuel systems? I am considering buying one from Summit but am unsure if its worth the time & effort....Thanks Craig



63.5 427 8V Galaxie
64 289 Galaxie convertable
63 Mercury Marauder 4V 390
XY GT clone 390
XR GT 1 of 596
35 ford 3 window coupe

Years ago, I used to use a cool can when I did a lot of drag racing. It's purpose as I understood it, was to cool the gasoline just before it entered the carburetor. This being done, the fuel is now more dense. We also insulated the fuel line going from the cool can to the carb[s], and put a heat shield between the carb[s]and the intake manifold. The idea was, more dense fuel charge along with the cooler air from the hood scoop, meant more dense mixture to the cylinders, which means greater volumetric efficiency, which equals more horsepower! Be sure to drain the cool can after every run, so as to not spill any water on the track, and getting on your tires. If you want to get real efficient results, use "dry ice" in it with 1" of water in the can- that really cools the fuel down!! I hope this helps your decision! It works!

on how much gain you are looking for. I had one on my last car (small block Pinto) and it was marginally helpfull, one or two hundereths at the most and that was during the summer in Phoenix. Other guys claimed more but that was with more engine than I had at the time.
When I worked for Woodard we tried cooling the fuel on the Dyno but saw no gain at all, however we didnt spend a lot of time tuning for it so that is not to say there wasnt some potential there just that we didnt see any with that modification alone.
I cant say you wont see an improvement or how much tuning you will have to do if any to get some.
All that being said if were my car I would try anything to gain even a little more HP if I were racing the car so I would use one if. I dont think I would buy one though, seeing how easy they are to build but then I am pretty much a cheapskate.
Hope this helps.

in fact its still in the car. It is the big blue Moroso can with a really nice heat sink. Sure looked cool but truthfully it didn't make the car any faster. I ran it back to back with ice water and dry. I saw no difference at all on the track. The only benefit would be to prevent vapor lock in severe hot weather driving conditions, thats it.
I stopped running ice water in it shortly after the test. I was more worried about a potential water leak at speed getting my rear tires wet then the .001 of a second increase in performance I might get. Save your money!!

Dave Walters
427 Galaxie Registry
Website
http://home.ptd.net/~pwalters

You want cool dense air entering the engine, but the fuel is a different story. If you could heat the fuel to a point just below vaporization without having other side effects like percolation in the float bowl, that would probably work better. More fuel would then vaporize, which would improve combustion.

Several years ago, I read in Hot Rod or Car Craft about someone that put some wire heater in the flow path in the cylinder head, and reportedly had good HP gains. I've never tried it, but from a physics perspective, the warmer the fuel is the more of it will vaporize in the short time it has between the carb and the cylinder.

I wouldn't suggest that anyone try heating their fuel on the way to the carb, your engine already does some of this for you! Typing this post makes me wonder if there could be benenfit on a fuel injected engine. The fuel is under more pressure, which would raise the boiling point, so you could heat it more. Then, when injected into the lower pressure intake, more vaporization could happen. If only I had a dyno and a FI engine.

a mesh was placed between the head and intake openings. Supposedly this helped because it broke up any fuel that might be forming sheets or larger globules on its way into the chamber...same reason some people want sharp edged valve jobs: to give the fuel one last place to 'cut' itself up into smaller droplets before getting zapped by the spark plug. I don't know that fuel traveling at close to supersonic speeds would have much heat transferred to it as it passed a few glowing wires. Could you jury up a heater to run warm/hot water through a carb spacer?

cars back in the day. my galaxie came with a carb spacer that had coolant running thru it, judging from the way my intake and carb heat up as it is i dont think it will help much if any.

was definitely a heater, I believe around the intake valve seat, to help vaporize the fuel. I doubt that I could find the article, it's been at least 5 years.

http://legendarycollectorcars.com/?page_id=901

What do like about FE's? ... F**king Everything!

Max Power in a race engine wants cold fuel and a dense air charge to allow optimum timing/compression yet that combo is far from condusive to having efficient combustion and complete burning of the fuel/air mixture. The concept of Cool Fuel and or Cool Air has to be fit in with tuning to achieve a gain in power output. Just dropping the fuel temp or fuel & air temp does not in itself produce power.

I find it interesting that Smokey used both the small turbocharger (homogenizer) turbine blender and the hot fuel/air mixture. Dumping raw fuel or even water droplets through a 30,000+RPM turbo does a hell of a vaporization job.

Most interesting is the HP per CuIn Smokey got out of it. You have to take all with a grain of salt because there's obviously BS Present:



"Acording to Hot Rod (their tests, not Smokeys) the Fiero 151 cubic-inch 4 cylinder engine now produces 250 hp and 230 ft.-lbs of torque. They report it gets more than 50 mpg and will do 0-60 in less than 6 seconds with no emissions."



What's this Nuclear Powered = "with no emissions."