here's a pic of the install...

to anyone thinking of this mod... look at where the cooler is... and think about a rear end accident. the potential for fuel leakage is there.... do it at your own risk.

[IMG]local://upfiles/1508/5211DFA9C0FF4B799A485A8AC5A748F6.jpg[/IMG]

 

thanks steve

 

Steve, I know the common sense approach is to put all radiators such as this fuel cooler at the front of the truck. But when moving down the road, air is also moving under the truck. Tie a small plastic flag to your frame and I'm sure the noise of it flapping will drive you nuts when your on the road. Why not put this cooler "in line" with the fuel line and attach it to the frame? You do increase the potential for damage because of the large size of the cooler, but I'm not sure how much worse it would be than the existing lines that are running to the front of the truck from the tank. I'm not too cozy with the fuel lines, so I don't know how they are situated on the frame and the setup may not work as easily as I think. I'm just thinking outside of the box here. The fuel cooler located in this position is similiar to a baseboard heater, with air flowing past the fins during movement, it will still have to remove heat from the fuel.

 

While I agree with putting it under the truck maybe making it more protected, but it would almost negate the purpose I think. Putting the cooler up front makes it very close to the fuel rail and therefor lessening the reheat from the cooler to the fuel rail. You could insulate the fuel lines from under the truck if that is where you mount it, but if you did not, you would almost defintely pick uyp a considerable amount of heat between the cooler and the fuel rail if you were to mount it under neath the truck.

 

I looked at mounting it under the truck inside the frame and although it could be done the benifit was minimized. you can insulate the line going up to the fuel rail and route it away from the e-mainfolds which should help, but also keep in mind that the air temp under the truck is going to have any engine heat it picks up along the way. one thing you could do it put it in the frame rail and feed the front side of the frame with cool air from the front of the truck. that would work the best. the frame is hollow and you may be able to rig something up.

edit: one other thing... with the upgraded brakes on my truck, braking in extreme conditions (emergency) was not near the issue as it was with the stock brakes... more food for thought... (powerstop cross-drilled rotors w/powerstop pads from summit racing.com).

 

also your taking advantages of moving air from the fan while at a stop or slow moving traffic.. this moving air wont be present if mounted to the frame rail.

edit: i just looked more closely to the picture. the statement above would make more sense if the mounting of the cooler would be in the path of moving air.. like infront of the rad/ac condenser

 

So.. basically what we are saying is, just like in every mod or in life in general there are advantages and disadvantages to everything. Obviously for optimum cooling effort in fron tof the radiator is the way to go to maximize the cooling effort while moving and stopped, but with this you bring in the inherrant risk of a rear end accident fuel issue. Where mounting it anywhere else would increase the safety of the device but would make it less efficient.

 

yup, agreed... the one thing with mounting it up high though is that if there is an accident, I think the risk might be reduced slightly because the cooler may not be in the direct line with the impact.

another alternative I looked at was using an in-line tranny cooler. it's design however is to remove the heat via a heat sink type of setup which may not show any benifit. my problem originally started with the bmw 325 and trying to run a program designed for 93 octane while only having 91. it pinged like crazy until I cooled the fuel (same method) and insulated the fuel rails. then it never pinged, even under sever conditions being 110 deg outside, car full of middle aged kids (10~15) under hard accelleration (sp?). with the bmw's (did this mod to 2 of them) and the truck, all had outstanding braking (comparatively speaking) so my concern was not that great. in the truck your up higher than most cars so you can see what's going on which also helped.

anyways... it's worth 6% mileage gain from my data that I took when I put the mod in...

 

Please forgive me, I had to crunch the numbers. For a 6% mileage gain which you reported, you would actually pay for the $40.00 part from jegs.com, not including shipping in about 2850 miles with current gas prices. Not too bad considering the national average for vehicles is between 10k and 12k a year. so you can actaully see a savings of between $80 and $120 a year depending on how much you drive. If you want to see my math, PM me. If enough people ask, I will start a new thread with a formula for figuring cost per mile, pretty simple really, have been using it alot lately to track the savings if I was to purchase a CTD right now.

 

Noob here ....

What is the advantage, or why do you need your fuel cooled in the first place ??

Someone mentioned mounting it to the inside of the frame rail as the fuel lines already are. If you want to increase airflow in that area, why not mount a little scoop to the rail as well. Kinda like the air dams mounted on the front of a motorcycle. they're popular with Jap bikes already, but they're sold seperatly for Harleys.

Just a thought.