Is it a good idea to heat wrap your fmic piping??
I have heat wrap my exhaust and have some left over. I was thinking of wrapping my fmic piping, since rotary have higher engine bay temp.

anyone done this??? any benefit??

thanks

 

It'd be nicer looking to get them ceramic/powder coated. Although anything on the IC pipes is pretty negligible anyways.

 

No, you want to shield your IC piping if anything, dont use the exhaust heat wrap. It will keep the heat in your piping when it does wwarm up. The intake shielding is differnt stuff, kinda looks like foil on the outside. Maybe I should use some foil? LOL JK

 

Your hot-side intercooler pipes can hit temps of 200F - 300F, depending on how much you're boosting...
Do you really want to wrap this???

The cold-side intercooler pipes are close to ambient (all in thanx to the intercooler), so it's a waste of time trying to insulate this side.

The IC does the majority of the heat rejection, so any gains from insulating the pipes would be minimal.

You'd get lower temps by wrapping the exhaust portions of the engine bay.


-Ted

 

If it were my car, I would wrap the cold side of the IC piping to insulate it from the engine bay heat, and then wrap it in Aluminum foil tape to help some more. Cool intake temps are extremely important, and the insulation will help keep the engine bay heat out of the intake air.

Besides, if it's left over, might as well be put to good use, even if the gains are minimal. Do some temp readings on WOT before and after the wrapping to see if it helped any.

 

Wrap the exhaust with a second layer.

 

yea...i got 100ft of heat wrap...
I wrap my exhaust (2 layers) already (still have a around 40ft left).

I will see if there is any different after wrapping the cold side of the ic piping.

 

I agree. Heat wrap looks like crap, corrodes the parts, and only makes about 5degF worth of difference at the most, which works out to just under 1% hp at the flywheel. Straight-wall pipes do not transfer heat worth beans, especially at 450cfm.

 

You can get some reflective wrap to keep heat out of your pipes at autozone. I put it on the coldside pipes because they where heatsoaking alot. I also wrapped the pipe coming off the turbo for some stupid reason but have not gotten around to pulling it off.

Does it help? Its hard to tell, but I still think 20 bucks is worth it.

 

Now, is it possible to have a higher air temp inside the cold side ic piping then the engine bay temp??
How can we measure air intake temp??

 

Buy a few temp probes, tap them into the hot side and cool side.

 

Use a spectro-themometer.........one of those fancy lazer dealies at Princess Auto (60 bucks)

Go for a quick drive and then stop and see whats up. Most air temp sensors like the one used by the haltech are slow to react.

 

I can insure you that the air is way cooler inside the pipes, then outside of them. That would be why it would be beneficial to keep the outside hot air from radiating in. For my front mount the cold side pipes outside of the engine bay are always cold, yet the under hood pipes are hot to the touch. Thats why I wrapped them to try and keep that hot engine bay air down.

 

the exhaust wrap u are talking about hold the heat in definitely not what u wanna do to your cold side, or hot side.

 

Yes.

Any automotive air intake temperature gauge set. Make sure you mount the sensor correctly so it does not heat soak from the surrounding metal.

No.

WTF are you talking about?

 

One of these:

http://www.thermoworks.com/products/ir/irgun.html


Infared, not spectrowhatever oops

Its alot easier then modifying your IC piping for probes for a little testing. We've used these alot at the dyno to measure filter temp, pre and post intercooler temps, intercooler piping pre and post AI injection.....................much more versatile for the purpose of testing. But you can't exactly do it while you drive, thats the only drawback.

 

So evil you are saying that the air in the engine bay is cooler then the air in side the cold side pipes, what is your reasoning behind that. If that was the case everyones IAT would be out the roof.

 

Insulation is insulation.

Exhaust wrap is simply an insulation primarily designed for keeping the thermal energy from the hot exhaust from radiating into the engine bay. It works as a barrier to thermal energy the same way on the intercooler piping; it keeps the thermal energy from the engine bay air from transferring to the intake air.

 

Yes, that's a spectral thermometer.

OK, here is the problem. That device is designed to measure the temperature of a surface area, not an air mass. For example, you could use it to measure the temperature of an intercooler pipe, but that would only indicate the temperature of the pipe itself, not necessarily the air in it or around it.

You should use a proper dry-bulb inlet air temperature sensor and gauge to measure the air temperature inside the intake tract. The sensor that comes with most standalone EMS's works just fine. This is usually called an IAT or ATS sensor.

It depends on many factors, but it is wrong to assume that the air inside the "cold" inlet pipe is colder than the engine bay air surrounding it.

 

It depends on many factors, but it is wrong to assume that the air inside the "cold" inlet pipe is colder than the engine bay air surrounding it.[/QUOTE]



Will you state a few factor that cause the air inside the "cold" inlet pipe may be "hotter" than the engine bay temp.
Everytime after i drove my t2 and i touch the ic piping, its always hot (really warm). I want to know if its cause by the engine bay or the air itself inside the piping.

I am boosting td07 for 13psi and i have a trust/greddy 2 row fmic..

 

- Engine bay ducted well
- Turbo operating out of its efficiency range and/or at high boost
- Engine not fully warmed up
- Bad intercooler (oxidizing kills cooling efficiency and cheapie Ebay intercoolers don't always work so well)

The pipe is going to retain and/or reflect heat regardless, so that is not a good way to test the system.

Question: It is 105degF outside on a hot, sunny summer day. You climb on top of a house with a tin roof and touch the roof. About how hot do you think it will feel?

 

[QUOTE=Evil Aviator;8361884]- Engine bay ducted well
- Turbo operating out of its efficiency range and/or at high boost
- Engine not fully warmed up
- Bad intercooler (oxidizing kills cooling efficiency and cheapie Ebay intercoolers don't always work so well)


Oh..ok, thank you for your input. I dont have to worry about all of this condition above. I am not running high boost YET... and my ic is trust/greddy ic

I always tought that ppl swithching from TMIC to FMIC (even when they are still running stock turbo) was to get away from the engine bay heat.

 

OK..now anyone has done this?? and did comparison before and after???


I dont feel like tapping my ic piping for some temp sensor... (wanna minimize restriction)

 

...

 

Thats very true, but for the purposes of data collection at the dyno, it seemed to work quite well. Typically I found that "cold side" measurement of the outside of the intercooler pipes only showed ~10F warmer then the air temp (typically just pre TB) was reading at a given time. So given the fact that you can measure any piece of the system easily at any time with no drilling tapping or other purchases, its probably safe to say if you want a pretty good idea of where you're at, one of those will do the trick.

Yeah, thats definetly the proper way.

But here's an example for you. 88 TII, T04-B, haltech E8, meth injection. On the dyno when he started spraying, we measured temps of the pipes (injecting mid way between intercooler and TB on the cold side) and with the spectrathermometer could watch the pipe temp dip down after a 4th gear pull....as much as 25-30F. The temp drop lessened as it got closer to the TB (where the air temp sensor is) but it still got much cooler. The Haltech's air temp sensor did not move however. After many pulls the largest variation from the haltech was 1F. Largest on the lazer thermometer was almost 40F! I'm not sure exactly why the sensor wasn't cooling off properly, maybe it just meant the meth was soaking more heat out of the pipes then it was the air but its something that I noticed FWIW.