Boondocker Dragon Water to Air conversion

I know there has been a lot of talk about the Boondocker air to air "INTERHEATER" for the Polaris Dragons. My brother bought a Turboed 2010 Dragon last year with the mini intercooler on it. After running it last season we determined something had to be done about the heat soak issues we were having. He had no hood vents only the side panel vents. We would see temps consistently around 200 degrees on average. This summer we bought the full vent kit from xxx and proceeded to covert his intercooler to a water to air setup. I have been running my own water to air setup on my M8 cat since 2010. Same riding I was seeing on average 75 degrees on my sled. I tried to come up with a simple way to swap to water to air but the dragon is not as friendly to fit intercoolers in as my cat was. After some thinking I talked with Boondocker and found out they have done a conversion of their air to air intercooler to water to air. I took the Fan off the intercooler and cleaned it up and brought it to Boondocker. The pictures show what I ended up with. All in all you can look to spend about 800 in parts. It is a stand alone system. Coolant flows from the 90 on the front of the cooler to the front tunnel cooler (I installed the stock Polaris tunnel cooler. The dragons have this cooler removed and a plastic plate put in it's place.) It then flows out of the cooler to the pump I mounted next to the chaincase (BTW the new pump draws way less power than the fan). It then flows up over the gas tank to the top of the intercooler T fitting. The nipple pointed up is the fill line. I am very anxious to test it out this year. The hardest part of the install was the tunnel cooler as you have to remove to track in order to gain access to rivet the cooler back in the tunnel. I will update you with temps when we can ride again.

The pump is from Boondocker. It is the pump they use on the UTV turbo kits. I wanted to use that pump versus the pump for the Pro because you can use 5/8 silicone hose to connect to all the fittings. I had them put on 5/8 fittings on the intercooler. The heat exchanger has 5/8 already. The UTV pump is 3/4 vs the pro that has 1/2. The silicone hose expands and slides over the 3/4 pump nicely. The flow is also a lot less for the Pro pump. 1 GPM for the Pro vs 4 GPM for the UTV pump. I have a 5 GPM on my Cat from Frozen Boost. The optimal coolant flow through the system is a complex question. The only way to know for sure is to try both pumps and see if there is a noticeable difference. The core Boondocker uses for their pro kit looks the same on the inside (where the turbo air goes through). The outside has no fins between the tubes and they are a little closer together. They just boxed the air to air cooler we had already and we are running coolant through it now. When I went in to Boondocker they said they have done this before with good results. It sure is funny how they are singing a different tune about the water to air intercoolers when just a year or two back they were trying to tell me air to air was the bomb! Makes me wonder about their recommendation for using the smaller pump. I insisted on using the bigger pump for the ease of connecting but had to really insist to get it from them! I normally would not go the route we did with wrapping an air to air core but it wasn't for lack of trying to get a water to air core to fit in there and not having to completely build a new air box. A little sacrifice on efficiency I am sure. I will let you know the results when we are riding again. Come on SNOW!

Update

Finally went for a ride yesterday. I am very pleased with the results. Highest temp we saw all day was 136 at the end of a long pull, and it cooled to less than 100 after only a few seconds of off boost running at the top. Coldest we saw while riding off boost was 58 and average temps around 70-90 playing around. All in all I wish there was an easier way to add more tunnel cooling capacity. I think that is why we are seeing the higher temp on boost than what I get on my cat. What a difference in power though. Would highly recommend doing this. Any one have any easy ideas for a bigger cooler????