I am considering putting a heat sheild on the turbo to reduce under hood temp, is this a good idea, or will it just shorten the life of the turbo?

 

There already is one over the turbo.

 

Yep, that's what the piece of silver metal with the 'crossed out hand symbol' is. It doesn't bother me so much although many NAM'ers have commented that they find it to be a major eye soar. I wouldn't be surprised to see aftermarket solutions out soon enough.

 

We have gone thru a few different configurations of heat sheilds and are doing our best to come up with the best all around design. We will post more info when it is available.

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

maybe if we just modified the stock heatshield to be more effective... i know they sell gold foil with an adhesive backing just for heat reflection purposes... Gold is the number 1 heat reflector so it may be worth a shot.... i just forgot where they sold it.

 

I haven't experience the super-hot boinnet temps that some have... so for me the existing heat shield works OK. I just wished it was a little more visually pleasing. It's the one thing under the hood that looks like a$$.

You would think with all the hign-heat carbon fiber exhausts on the market they could find somthing a little more attractive here. Heck, I'd pay a couple hundred for a purely cosmetic cover to go over the existing tin piece.

 

We agree with you on the looks of that piece of tin. I guess they had to cut costs somewhere but why on something that is so out in the open is beyond me. In any event when we noticed the scoop on our car starting to deform this summer we decided that something had to be done. Hopefully this functional piece will be pleasing to the eye as well. Time will tell and I will put up anything I can as soon as possible.

Randy
m7 Tuning

 

If the heat keeps deforming the scoops, MINI will come up with a solution. I am not worried.

 

we all get JCW carbon fiber scoops for free

 

Exactly!

 

take off the turbo and manifold. get the manifold ported and an upradeted turbo put on there with a coated exhaust housing. coat the manifold in something like swaitech (sp). get the down pipe coated also. you could wrap the down pipe also. then you could build your own shields that cover the whole turbo and manifold and downpipe.

this SHOULD reduce underhood temps a little.

thanks Chris.

 

but wrapping the exhaust actually isn't a good thing. It reduces the radiant heat but bear in mind, that 'heat' has to go somewhere and it will go back up/down the exhaust to other engine components.

 

Thanks for the responses, and I will be waiting to see what the heat sheild will look like maxmini. But if i were to install another heat sheild, would that in any way create much more heat in the turbo and maybe damage it?

 

the rule of thumb when working out the effiecncies of an engine are 1/3 goes out the exhaust, 1/3 into the cooling system and the finalk 1/3 into actually driving the car.

now you are right! that 1/3 of the energy put into the engine has got to go somewhere! but you dont want it in your engine bay, getting stuff hot, increasing intake temps, etc, etc. so you try and trap it in the exhaust till its is under the car then you let it all go.

Chris.

 

if you where to actually see how hot your turbo get when driving hard i dont think you would worry too much!

even stock cars can see red hot turbo after long periods of hard use.

Chris.

 

But more heat means more flow, more flow means more power

 

i dont think it means more power. it means the turbo will spool quicker as there is more energy in the exhaust gasses to do the work. the problem is this can cause the turbo to 'choke' sooner.

Chris.

 

The heat shield is very hideous. There will probably be a prettier aftermarket piece later... hopefully not too expensive! I'm a sucker for engine dress-up.

Ah, the days of dress-up...

 

Have you guys seen the pics/videos of the turbo getting cherry red hot while being pushed hard? I stumbeled across this one on Alta's myspace page:

Here is a direct link to the video:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...deoid=19517670

warning: not for the faint of heart

 

Here are a few quick shots of our new heat shield for the R-56 . It will have a under layer of aerogel as well but all you will see is as shown in these quick shots we took at AMVIV. More details to follow.

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

Sure looks purdy

 

any idea on pricing yet?

 

We should know by the end of the week .

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

Can you please inform me why should anyone put a heat shield?
Just to reduce the temperature under the hood?
Then open the scoop and the temperatures will be significantly reduced.

By installing this heat shield the only thing that happen will be that the all the high temperatures will be constantly trapped around the turbine, and no fresh air will be able to reduce them.
It is like being covered in the summer in the beach with a blanket.

 

Well since there's already a heat shield in place, this would at least clean it up aesthetically.

I'm in for one as long as the price is semi-reasonable