Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

My Delica will be here in about a month. I am still driving my 1989 4Runner which is completely falling apart at the seams.

One of the things I was considering though, before I junk my 4Runner is pulling out the window washer system and installing it in my L400 when I get it - and pointing the nozzles at the intercooler. I have heard that this gives a performance boost by cooling the charged air. It is different of course, than the water injection that some of the L300 owners are doing.

Do you guys think that this is worth the bother?

Sounds messy - and I personally would hate introducting new sources of water under the hood to rust out fun and exciting components! Plus high humidity here; might be a bit different down in Arid-zona.

Can't speak from personal experience, but from what I've seen on the forums, clean air/fuel filter, spacer under the wastegate actuator rod to up boost, twiddle with the fuel pump, and sitck on a bigger exhaust seem to be the common get-up-and-go improvers.

my scooby has those sprayers and the difference is noticeable when on a long climb. To keep things from getting wet however, you may want to make some sort of a vented tray beneath to shunt the water off to the back or the side, a small piece of sheet stainless and a little fudging would probably do it, just make sure the air has enough room to get out the back side!

Might as well try it, sounds like a fun project. You would likely need different nozzles though...something that would make a finer misting pattern than the windshield nozzles. You could hit up an irrigation shop for cheap micro-jet type fogger nozzles that match the output of the windshield washer pump...should only cost a couple dollars. Take pics of the install if you do it.

I would be interested in the outcome of this as well. would be a good addition for 4x4'ing since there would be no air flow and cooling from evaporation works extremely well.

I have used water to cool my overheating motor on big climbs (not the delica, but an older field truck I had). Works great think about the energy needed to evapourate a water. lots of energy exchange.

Psilosin's got the right idea. You could also try a blend of alcohol/water to increase its cooling capacity if you know you're going to be doing a lot of low speed wheeling or something. Water would be fine for day to day.

Chewy's right too - you can make a tray to reclaim the water, but also make sure that it doesn't block the flow of outside air through the intercooler, as that's your principle cooling medium. You probably don't need to worry too much about additional water under there though, how much water do you think gets under there without causing too many issues when driving in the rain? On this as well, you could actually bend up some S/S vents and fins to draw the air away from the lower side of the intercooler. Not sure what it looks like under there, but you could even vent this to the underside of the body so that the air currents actually draw more air in through the hood scoop. Some engine bays can have pressure issues which actually prevent air induction through the scoop. It's like pick up trucks that are actually more efficient with the tailgate up, as they have a low pressure pocket in the tray, which they lose when people drive around without the tailgate... only it's bad in this case.

Other thing to think about would be to also have it throttle controlled, which they do with a lot of the subies I used to play with. Have it come on when the throttle is depressed more than 50% so that it comes on without you even knowing it. If you're doing a hill ascent, perhaps it might be worth having an over-ride switch so you can have it on all the time if necessary. To wire it in on a stupid-roo we used to use the throttle voltage which was communicated to the ECU. Splice it off that and there's your main controller.

Same as other L400 owners, it's also worth making sure that the IC is operating at its maximum efficiency too. Use aluminium/stainless steel mandrel bends to replace the plastic crap piping that it comes with and I hear that you can gain much better air flow. Mandrels are a good idea either way.

Your IC is going to be the biggest deciding factor in the performance of your vehicle besides the engine/turbo themselves. Make sure it's working well, and you'll get so much more/better power. Engines love cold air :)

No guarantees on all this of course, but I love tinkering with turbos and intercoolers... you can do so much!