Ok its about 75 here in iowa finally and i was feeling my IC piping after a long drive and my pipe that comes right off my intercooler (cold side) was pretty cold. then i felt it up in the engine bay and it was hot. now i remember a buddy of mine had some sort of wrap around his cold pipes to keep the heat of the engine bay off the piping. but i can not find it anywhere. does anyone have a clue of where i can get some of this stuff???

 

I imagine its the same as header/exhaust heat wrap. I just order a DEI kit BTW off summitracing.

 

exhaust wrap keeps heat in not keep it out.

 

exhaust wrap, thermal wrap it all works the same and it actually comes with the old school greddy/hks kits to wrap around the piece comming from the tb and passes over the intake manifold. I wrap mine and it helped out alot.

 

I thought they were different. i have some extra exhaust wrap laying around. so if i wrap the cold pipes in it you think it will make a difference.

 

yeah, thats what I wrapped my pipes in and it keeps the pipes wayyyyy cooler with it because what it is doing is keeping that hot intake manifold heat outside of the cool intake air. My front mounted intercooler piping around the manifold used to get so hot I couldn't touch it but after I wrapped it I have not had a problem at all with heat there.

 

Thermo-Tec (http://www.thermotec.com/) and Design Engineering (DEI) (www.designengineering.com) both make a special silica wrap to reflect heat. You can use that to wrap your IC piping if you want.

 

Wrapping the intercooler pipe with a heat barrier will only cool the intake air by about 4-5 deg F, which works out to only about 2 hp for most applications.

 

4-5*F is better than nothing for a lower intake charge. Free hp is just icing!

 

plus it's not the hp that I care about at all! and I will beg to differ on that point evil aviator. Not to argue with you because I know you know your **** but when I can't even touch the ic piping around the intake manifold without the wrapping and then when I wrapped it now I'm able to touch the metal no problem I think there is a huge differance in temps. The only thing I care about is detonation and the cooler the air going into the engine the less chance of detonation.

 

The 4-5 deg F temperature differential approximation I gave was quoted from George Spears (Spearco Intercoolers), who dedicated many years of his life to studying such things. However, this is just an approximation, and your situation will vary depending on boost level, turbo efficiency, intercooler efficiency, engine bay heat, pipe characteristics, etc.

Although I can see why you assume that a hot pipe means hot air inside, did you bother to test the AIR temperature before and after the heat shield? The temperature of the pipe itself doesn't matter as long as the pipe doesn't melt.

 

I'm in the school of thought that since the velocity of the intake charge is high, the actual amount of time the charge spends "touching" that hot intake pipe is very low. Yes, i believe the pipe is hot to the touch, but that does not mean the intake charge in the pipe is that hot. To test this theory use two temp gauges, one at the end of the intercooler and one in the throttle body elbow. My guess would be that they read very close to each other. Feel free to prove me wrong, as i have not done the test myself.

Cheers,
Pat

 

well the way I look at it if the ic pipe is hot it's going to act like a heatsink and the hotter the air on the metal tude that air goes through the hotter the air that will pass threw it. I don't know maybe I'm off but that just kind of sounds like common sense to me but maybe not. I need to get some sort of temp gauge to see the differant readings from this thermal wrap and also a cai. Like I said I've never really thought of either of these mods to add hp witch of course it does (not by much) but what I really did both of these thing for where to cut down on intake temps thus reducing the chance of detonation. I think in this respect just like adding hp every little bit helps.

 

Soooo... who's gonna test it?

 

I'm sure someone has tested this.....but I'll do it once i get my car back together and the Wolf installed. Hopefully by April 24th since thats when autoX starts up again

Pat

 

I'm not sure how much of a differance it will make on the newer greddy style intercooler however with the old school hks/greddy one like I have that passes right over the hot intake manifold I'm sure it does wonders. I mean there is a reason why people get away from the stock top mounted intercooler right? Isn't that reason because it sits right up on the intake manifold causing major heat soak? so if that can happen with the ic why can't it happen with the ic piping?

 

So for people who did wrap their exhaust and IC pipes:

Did you simply use the heat wrap or did you also use the sealing spray? I ask this because the sealing spray that came with my DEI kit says it needs 500*F to cure so that pretty much means it needs to go in an oven.

 

oops dp, damn forum

 

In addition, it would also depend on the length of the intake pipe and the amount of time the air spends in the pipe. I don't know that much about turbos, but I would think that they cannot, after a certain point, take in the air as fast as it comes in. So the air in the intake may spend some time "dormant" in the hose while waiting to be sucked in by the turbo. But then again, I'm a newbie to RX7's.....

 

the other thing that gets me is if it didn't have much effect why would greddy, hks, and reamimia (lol I suck at spelling that word) all put heat wrap in the ic kit?

edit: also with my heatsink theory this would also mean that the hot pipes would then make the intercooler itself because of the heatsink theory. Again I could be wrong.

 

Thanks for the replys everyone they all helped. and i know im prolly not going to get to much HP outa this. im with hondahater on this i want to decrease my chance of detionation as much as i can, and get a few poines outa it =)

 

The only way i can see to have "dormant" air in your intake runner is if the car is off. The engine is always sucking air, thats what it does.

After re-reading your post i see that you are talking about pre-compressed intake charge. It is still moving right along, if it wasn't the engine would not run.

Forgive me if i am mis-understanding your point.

Pat

 

So when a 13B engine is running at a normal 750 rpm idle, how fast do you think the air is traveling through the inlet?

 

ive wrapped my exhaust manafold (HKS) and DP along witht he cold side of my IC. I believe it helps i have no before and after temps. with the cold air hooked up ive seen crazy low temps sometimes in the negative. with no cold air temps were 5-10deg warmer, with the filter right on the turbo. ht epipes do heatsoak still when the engine is off for awhle and cools back down eventually. and stays cold after that

 

im gonna wrap mine just because the pipes are ugly and I don't want to paint them .