I am willing to bet most customers with FMIC remove the AC, I am in the same boat as you- I like AC! Nothing worse then sitting in traffic with the top down when its really hot out or if it starts to rain- which has happened once or twice on the way to or from a large car meet

A few others have told me to heat wrap practically the entire exhaust, makes a huge difference in the car

 

Yikes! That is a bit high, doesn't leave much margin if something were to actually fail....

I've got a villager fan that I need to install, I've got confidence that it will cool as least as well as stock w/ A/C before the intercooler is installed. I've found a writeup that uses the stock thermoswitch and "a/c idle up" feature so I'll see how that works.

On a related note, I had that little aux a/c fan but it died, I wonder if I could just wire up the new fan to the wiring for that one? seems like it would be pretty simple...

Finally, any particular reason you ran the fuel lines and fpr an extra 3' to the hottest part of the engine bay?

 

Actually it is not, on the FDs the fans do not come on until 97C on low. Of course we lower these temps on-time when we install the PFC.


We already have the TII aux fan installed in front of the A/C condenser. We already have our fans being turned on by the Power FC and it kicks the idle up.

It is by far NOT the hottest part of the engine bay. If you are concerned about the heat wrapped DP generating enough heat to melt the SS fuel lines, that is foolish. The car would stop running as the heater hose and engine harness would have been destroyed long before.

We have actually done testing with thermal probes while driving and laser thermometers on the dyno, the FPR location is far from being in any danger. It is also NOT 3 feet from the engine. It is 12" from the fuel rail allowing the internal dampener to still be effective.

 

What temp would you consider to be dangerous? It seems that most try to keep them sub 200* ideally but I've heard of running as high as 230* without (immediate) damage.


Do you notice any significant drop in temps when it kicks on? Mine didn't seem to be doing much when it was running. Now that its kicked the bucket, it seems like removing it and relying on the "high" setting of the e-fan when necessary might be the thing to do...


Interesting. It would seem that even a heat wrapped downpipe would still be hotter than the other side of the motor where exhaust doesn't exit....but I haven't monitored anything so that was just an assumption. The concern was never that the lines would melt lol (I don't recall saying that...) merely that in terms of fuel temperature, that might not be the most ideal location.

Testing is always superior to conjecture, so thanks for sharing your experiences/results. To be clear, I did not say it was 3 feet from the engine (the bay isn't even 6ft wide and the motor is in the middle ) I was referring to the additional hose required to mount the FPR in that location which I estimated to be around 3ft (12" from the fuel rail X 3 fuel lines = I wasn't too far off )

 

I prefer to see temps closer to 86-87C (186-189F) while cruising without A/C and 90-93C (194-199F) with the A/C on. Running the A/C is always going to yield higher water temps.

The TII aux fan is wired in to the same E-fan circuit, so there is no difference.

Of course it is hotter than the other side of the engine bay, but there is no available space over there. It is still not the hottest place in the bay as you stated. On the JDM models the brake booster, clutch master, steering column all much closer to the turbo and DP.

Fuel temp- it is the return line, all the fuel is already past the motor where the fuel temps could even play a role. It is about to be dumped back into the tank with all the other fuel. The minimal increase (if any) in over all fuel temp does not effect anything on our car.