Been Busy Again

[Vimmy]

Hi Guys, just a quickie, I went to town a wee bit on keeping the engine bay temps down over the last few weeks. I got myself a roll or two of aluminium backed glass fibre based tape and started winding it onto the turbo coolant pipe, air filter intake pipe and so far the FMIC input pipe from the turbo.

I'm waiting on a shielded thermocouple to come to properly measure the intake temps pre throttle body, once thats in place then the other fmic pipe is to be lagged in the same way.

I replaced the two expansion tank/coolant hoses with newer/straighter ones and moved them away from the (stupidly positioned) top oem position on top of the air filter to stop direct heat into the intake. They will be lagged once the new air filter shroud has been finally finished. The filter shroud has had a similar amount of lagging and pretty much is a sandwich of two thin metal sheets with a foil/bubble wrap material in the middle to reduce heat soak from the PAS. Once these are done then the top/bigger radiator hose will get the same treatment.

The PAS tank has been given the Carl Davey treatment with a set of spacers to keep the PAS tank from directly heating up the intake manifold and does it well One of the PAS hoses has been lagged, the other one to be done time permitting.

Whilst in was in there I put in a bypass hose for the throttle body to stop the coolant from heating up all the nice cool air that the fmic has worked its nuts off doing. Without being to bypass the Idle Air Control Valve (again the same coolant runs through this from the throttle body) I lagged the intake pipe from the air hose over the top of the manifold to again reflect heat away as it feeds warm air right into the throttle body.

Finally I made a reflective coat for the throttle body silicon hose to reflect heat away as underneath the throttle body there are a pile of exposed coolant hoses kicking out lots of heat.

You're probably thinking I'm a bit of a nutter (and you'd be right) but I'm hoping this will go a long way to reducing the engine bay temps by keeping the heat away from the air intake pipework and therefore reduce intake temps too.

Next on the list is some of Carl Davey's manifold spacers to really cut back on heating of the intake manifold from the engine block - they can reduce the heat by a good amount indeed

It won't win shows for best looking bay, but hopefully will keep my intake temps down a tad...car was going well this morning on the way to work tho'

[rig-pig]

nice m8, good job

[Vimmy]

Thanks matey, I need to fit another cold air intake too from the front indicator section to get some air moving over the top of the engine itself as I have rear facing vents where the scoop once was and need to increase air flow to move the air out, yet another task to add to the list.

What I do need to confirm tho' is if I can get away with wrap for the exhaust manifold that is rated to 600 degree C, there are other rated at around 1000 degrees C but the cost is way high. I was going to put on an initial layer on and then a secondary one also. I spotted this on the Gobstopper whilst looking for some inspiration

[rig-pig]

this is the wrap i have on the exhaust from the turbo to the back box, a bit Smokey for the first 10 min then ok, no probs so far

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/GRAPHITE-IMPREGNATED...=item3cabfe7e08

[Vimmy]

this is the wrap i have on the exhaust from the turbo to the back box, a bit Smokey for the first 10 min then ok, no probs so far

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/GRAPHITE-IMPREGNATED...=item3cabfe7e08

Thanks for th einfo from their website they seem to know their stuff, the weave seems pretty tight at 1.5mm thick should be easy to install too. I previously bought some graphite impregnated wrap from germany. The wrap was thicker than this and a PITA to fit, the weave on it wasn't as tight as this appears to be and its all but fallen off and rotted. I'll give this a try and see how it goes, even better that its made in the UK too, not some faraway country being produced on the cheap.

If you had it back to the backbox did it suffer any from water ingress through the weave much?

Cheers,

Col