Originally Posted by k-huevo
The black heat dispersant coating is not a blocker like ceramics. It will allow the heat to exit faster than bare metal.http://www.cradin.com/thermal_dispersant.htm

interesting results!

 

What a great effort......thanks for posting all of this......someone has to push the envelope and make the discoveries and you guys that do it know who you are....thanks. (I'm surprised we haven't heard from Andy)

back to a relevant question for me........what is the recomendation here for greatest performance gains/longevity etc?

 

With any method of reducing engine operating temperatures the purpose is to help keep temperatures down. While this might not result in dramatic lowering of 0-60 or quarter miles times, as the engine heats up and heat soak occurs you'd be better off maintaining performance with lower temps vs loosing power as things heat up. So repeated 0-60 or quarter mile runs with less heat soak would be a plus.

I've tried exhaust wrap on my Milltek header with a coat of silicon spray. I went from the primaries down to the race cat. This burned initially with alot of smoke but did ok after about one day. Helped the temperatures only a little and within one year the wrap turned brittle (did track sessions, autocross and three driving schools). I would not recommend wrap and Milltek doesn't have any data to support that it would help.

Since then I have a ceramic coated (fully) milltek header with a hand buffed (steel wool) finish- looks like polished silver. This seems a little cooler now, engine temps less in autocross but it depends on the ambient temps. On the track after one session of 20 minutes, heat soak builds up resulting in less power.

 

F15Eweapon, intake temperature was measured inside the intake air manifold by the T-MAP sensor. Ultimately, next to the combustion chamber, this is where the temps are most important in the intake path. What is significant about the higher temps on the intercooler surface is the heat transfer. Instead of the heat remaining inside it is drawn to the outside.

SpiderX, any time the IAT can be reduced that increases longevity by way of lowering the possibility for pre-detonation (I didn’t log that block on this comparison), and it enhances performance by allowing cooler denser air to be ingested.

This is not ground breaking stuff. This application is what the thermal dispersant was designed for. It’s being used in NASCAR, professional drag racing, snowmobile racing, aircraft, etc.

Again, the thermal dispersant coating is not a blocker like ceramics.

 

I realize it is not ground breaking for all automotive but it is for the Mini, thanks again

 

Glad to see you got it done & are happy with the results. Aside from drawing out the heat,the coating is corrosion resistant & is slipperier than the metal thus increasing the amout of air able to pass through the cooling fins.

This is a photo of mine done in grey.

 

Keith, this is neat info, and I appreciate you sharing your findings with us. Someone asked what to expect cost-wise earlier in the thread, can you share that with us? Is this a service that can be found around the country, or should we all bombard you with PM's asking for a hookup?

 

It cost $50 to coat the intercooler at Cradin. It was only the second intercooler done at this shop. I was able to inspect the substrate prep testing under magnification and watch the media blasting which was worth part of the cost of admission. Be sure to remove the mounting hardware and mask the end tank lip to avoid extra prep charges. The only other place that would give me a price quote was Thin Air Power Sports in Nevada at $135. I know that PolyDyn in Houston will do it also and I’m sure Michael (namwob) will take good care your baby and by now they must have come up with a price. Oddly enough HPC doesn’t provide this service. There are many places around the country that can apply the coating so you probably can find one close to home.
http://www.cradin.com/
http://www.thinairpowersports.com/
http://www.polydyn.com/

 

I keep thinking about this situation, with you running the car and the IC seeming hotter to the touch, and I've gotta ask ya something. Please understand, I know the theory quite well and it sounds sweet, but....

If the coating is running hotter than it did, why would it unless the coating, while "sucking out heat" holds onto it stronger than did the aluminum of the stock piece? It seems to me like the coating would get colder and stay colder if it was a) pulling heat out and b) letting it go. It could be, it seems to me, that it is could just be holding the heat it gathers on your surface. Now, if that is the case, isn't that just asking for welds to break and the item to degrade qucker? Are there any coatings which actually remove heat and release it easily too? Thanks for any insight.

 

A friend of mine is a defence contractor, and they specialize in heat exchangers. I called him an the answer was that the only thing they would ad to virgin aluminum would be a cadmium plating that would prevent corrosion.
And any substrate would actually reduce metal to air transfer.

My take on this is....if NASA, The Army or the Navy wiill not use it, is propably
a reason for it. And remember they love spending money on any improvement
that can be had

peter
Team M7
562-608-8123

 

the defense dept has a considerably different agenda than Nascar. Even the space shuttle (or whatever it was) used a ten year old computer design, because they wanted simplicty and reliability, not cutting edge computing power.

I made a portable 20' x 50' field tent prototype once for the Army; it had to meet their standards and ultimately was medieval compared to what you can get from North Face. The operating manual had to be readable to a 5th grader, for example.

different agendas.

 

One characteristic I left out of the intercooler report was the surface temperature drops rapidly after shut down, just like the oil pan. It appears the heat is not being “held” in suspension. These are observations; I am not an expert in the mechanics involved. It’s time for you to fire-up the search engines if you want more information.
The product is used in the aerospace program as well and this is one of the reasons I became interested in it. Next week I’ll get in touch with my Navy/government contractor contact to see if I can get any details. Just to be sure were on the same page Peter, the heat dispersant is not a blocker like ceramics.

 

You could borrow my heat transfer book from college.

It sounds like the coating increases the rate of heat transfer to the ambient air. There is also a difference between surface temperature and the temperature further in the material. The heat is probably being released quicker making the surface hotter. A greater percentage of heat from the intake air is also probably being absorbed, which would mean it is making the surface of the intercooler hotter. I think the key here though is that the coating evenly spreads the heat so there aren't hot spots.

 

Now the weather has turned colder I have some new tactile impressions from the coated intercooler. It's apparent to me now the "hot to the touch" I felt on Friday was due to heat soak after a hard run and extended idle. Yesterday was 20 F cooler and after a cruise the cold side of the intercooler was cold and the hot side was warm. After a couple of minutes everything warmed up to the same temp. Today at 40 F ambient the entire intercooler was cold and stayed that way.

I mentioned to a Navy contractor the comment Peter made about the thermal dispersant not being effective because the government does not use it on heat exchangers and he laughed for a solid minute. He also brought up the obvious difference in agendas and added that the Navy has a spec for the thermal dispersant regardless of it not being used by the contractor Peter refered to.

An e-mail sent to Techline Coating Products (not the manufacturer of the coating on my intercooler) about their TLTD thermal dispersant and the defense industry resulted in this reply from Leornard Warren, "The initial material was developed under Gov't contract for the Navy in the 1960's for protecting, cooling, and lubricating automatic weapons on naval ships". He didn't say anything about the government coating intercoolers but it is still interesting debating trivia.

My only agenda here is to share my first evaluation of this product application on the intercooler and I wish it didn't require me to be reactive. The small effect size from my experiment is certainly not enough to establish external validity but I think it was sufficiently significant to warrant a closer look.

 

And here's a closer look.

 

Most of the Thermal Dispersent coatings i have seen have aluminum and somtimes brass in them which will desperse heat very well. The main advantage the thermal dispersents i have seen is they have a texture. This texture provides more surface area on the IC and Fins for better cooling.

k-huevo,
But very interesting findings. You said you measured 30+ drop from the IC being coated. And this is measured using the TMAP sensor? Was the stock IC cleaned from oil?

 

If the IC were a perfect insulator, it would feel like ambient temp. This would be a crappy IC, but it would feel cool. If it's a perfect conductor with zero thermal mass, it would feel just like the air in it (at least when the car wasn't moving), so the temp you feel shows an opposite trend than the air temp inside. Sorry it's not clear, but the content is burried there somewhere.

If the ~40F drop is real, then this is wayyyyyyyy better than a larger IC. And you can still change the spark plugs with the IC on. Now who's game to coat an aftermarket IC?

Matt

 

ALTA2, temps were logged with the BiM-COM beta diagnostic program via the OBDII. The uncoated intercooler had about 900 miles since the last acetone flush so it wasn’t clean and the oil coated interior could be a possible extraneous variable. This would be a good point for future research; do a before and after flush comparison.

 

Someone give me a price and turn around time and I'll think about it.

 

He's going to send me a stock IC. I'll do swaps and tests after it's coated. Who knows what the data will show. But at least I'll be able to do fast swaps back and forth, log power and temps....

But don't ask when it's gonna post, because the IC has to show up, get coated and tested......

Matt

ps, let's see what NAM can do to this spirit of cooperation!

 

this intercooler will beat the pants off anything out there and the Dr. will post dyno numbers to prove it! Results will be writtten up and posted on his website: bs.com. or since he has received $ contributions to fund this, the results will be given to the contributors and they can decide to post...no wait, we have to get permission from K&N...no, from Andy/Randy...from the institute of physics...from mr. Eggs...
I love christopher walken

 

Matt, it's great that you're going to do this eval, but what will you do differently from what Keith has done?

 

Keith, I'm trying to get my head around your results. Could you explain what you mean by the phrase "overall average IAT", specifically 'overall average'. Not questioning your veracity, just trying to make sure I understand what the results represent.

 

I highly recommend installing a pair of these:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=23248

Let me know if you need help crunching numbers, coming up with testing scenarios, etc. The nice thing about a test like this is that you are only changing one thing, the outside surface of the IC. So, interior volume, pressure drop, etc. should all be uniform.

 

62Lincoln,There were four runs without the thermal dispersant coating on the intercooler and four runs with the coating. Each run was preceded by a stationary 1 to 2 minute idle before starting the data log. Runs 1 and 3 of each condition started with a couple of hills, a couple of curves and finished on a cruising straight. Runs 2 and 4 started on a straight and ended on a mild positive grade. The temps from each test run column was added and then divided by the number of rows (around 450) to get an average for each run. The averages from each treatment condition was added then divided by the number of runs to get the overall average. The overall coated temps were subtracted from the overall un-coated temps to get the difference. With the stationary logged cells included the difference was 4.09 C and using only the cells logged while in motion the difference was 4.31 C. No inferential statistics were applied, just a simple cursory analysis. As it turns out the simplicity of converting Celsius to Fahrenheit got me in trouble and the retraction of the outcome significance will be seen in a later post.

So far no one I’ve offered the data to has accepted the task of review. My results are only as good as the controls and I will admit they were not as tight as they could have been. If the outcomes are repeatable then we have something to get exited about and not just curious.

I can’t get too excited about lower intercooler temps right now; I’m sitting here in a snowmobile suit because I have no heat and it’s 25 degrees with ice outside. On Saturday it was over 85.