Ahhh nice, thought it was initially but then saw the pipework still go down the front.... What's the benefits? Quicker boost?
The pipe comes up from the turbo, the front housing is rotated to face the outlet up instead of down.
Boost will build faster because there is less space it has to fill up, but it's not going to be and earth shattering difference, the main advantage of a W/A system is the thermal conductivity of water compared to air. The heat will transfer from the boosted air into the water better than it would to air of the same temperature, as in the case of a front mount IC.
Water also has a really high specific heat capacity which means it will absorb just over 4 times more heat than air will.
The downside is that once hot, water will stay hot for a long time, so it's more suited to short bursts, not really suited to track racing...............but on saying that, I have a huge radiator for it, and a 10lt reservoir that I can put ice into......................AND an additional small radiator inside the car that I can lay a block of dry ice on top of to really pull the temps down for any track/powercruise type work.
I don't know of anyone anywhere that has made a setup like mine, and I can't wait to see what the intercooler water outlet temps are with some mountain driving. I plan on doing a full write up with data once I have tested it's limits.
But in the meantime here is a pic of the intercooler radiator, it's a modified CC lancer A/C condenser which sits in front of my oil cooler.