so spinning off from tic's playing around with thermal dispersant we decided to start messing around as well. a little info about thermal disperant: "Being able to move and control heat is of tremendous importance. Excessive temperature can lead to metal fatigue, boiling fluids, damaging metal expansion, reduce electrical efficiency and a host of other problems. Traditionally dealing with heat has been handled either by expanding the radiating surface, constructing parts from materials that are more heat conductive and using the color black. With advances in thermal management methods additional ways of enhancing heat transfer now exist. Individual products such as TLTD can be utilized by themselves or in conjunction with other coatings to manage the flow of heat. TLTD is capable of transferring heat faster than the bare metal surface. While TLTD does make use of the color black, TLTD is more than a simple "black body" heat emitting coating. TLTD includes ingredients that also contribute to increased heat flow. Combining these properties with increased corrosion protection and the thin film application technique, maximizes thermal transfer capabilities. Effective on Brakes, Intake Manifolds, Cylinder Heads, Oil Pans, Radiators, Intercoolers and more. " with that said, we decided to start with a tmic off of an 02 wrx. tonight i got two things accomplished; baselining some temps from an uncoated tmic, and got the tmic sandblasted and coated with thermal dispersant. i'll post up my baseline temp points soon. tomorrow evening i'm going to try and get some preliminary results from the dispersant as long as the weather cooperates. Justin www.grimmspeed.com some pics from tonight
Make sure you use temp probes to measure air temps. I cn tell you from the last 5 years I have had I temp probes that the outside temp is not the same as the air going through it. Also, with a good scoop to ic seal, there is no need for that. Russ
i'm measuring surface temperature for now. i'm basically testing how it helps heat soak right now. this is something you'd want to do in conjunction with your stock/aftermarket ic seal...not in replacement of.
I've got an actual inlet air temp sensor right before the TB if you'd like to experiment with that. The only thing is I have to take my radiator out to get my IC out. My Link software lets me datalog all that stuff pretty nicely in tables or graphs though.
baseline results. in retrospect i would have done more start and stop to see how quickly the IC gets cooled after heatsoak because this is where i think it would be most effective. these are baseline uncoated results. hopefully i can get the first dispersant results tonight.
like I said before, you need to monitor the air temps, not the surface temps. The air going throught the IC is not going to be the same as the surface temps. without a good seal and without any type of coatings, my air temps are within 3-5 degrees of ambient air temps (post ic). There are certain trends that will happen with the air temps that are goign to be alot different than the surface temps. If you are going to go through all the trouble of collecting data, you might as well collect good solid data. Russ
There's a nasioc thread that mentions a few companies that do it. I had never heard of it before so I did a search on google and this thread came up on the first page... interesting stuff. I had never thought you could spray something onto a surface to increase the thermal transfer... http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=976485
my problem i have right now is i dont have an extra IC to tap and i dont have a temp probe. i'd definitely like to do that in the future though for sure.
I have an extra 03 tmic now since i went to an 06. It already has a hole tapped in the bottom drivers side for some reason (was there when i got it), but i cut the TB back to fit my t-leggy. PM me and we can figure something out
I recall the Niaasn guys using Swain's "Black Body" thermal dispersant coatings for intercoolers 10 or so years ago. I don't recall how effective they were or if anyone every really measured it.
probably good to reduce heat soak, but I dont see the inside air temps dropping too much unless the whole system from turbo to engine is coated... ha ha is this stuff gonna burn off like the ceramic stuff on exhaust parts??? I guess not as bad seeing the direct temps wont be extreme.. but it would be a shame if it does cause then it would look really ****ty coated over everything...??!!! looks hot htough... (like tom NO pun intended.. ok well just a little)
"Good numbers and tests... The numbers you got are almost exactly the same as the numbers I got when I started testing my stock IC and it's set up. I'm Now waiting for your numbers to compare with my numbers after my improvements... as I have now improved my stock IC and it's set up to 85% from it's 60% efficiency that I started out with. " reply from a guy on clubwrx. he had 1 external thermocoupler and 2 probes(one before and one after intercooler) while testing.
ok so i have some raw data here from testing tonight. i'd say i'm pretty happy with the results. i believe i see a high of 26% cooler temps in the data. ambient temps were very similar to last night. raw data snapshot Driving portion of test. Blue is coated, pink is uncoated. First 1/3 car idle after getting back to the shop. last 2/3 car sitting off. Final data point is 21 minutes after the car is turned off. Raw snapshot of the whole shabang, driving, sitting, idling, and off together. Justin
yeah i accidentally put a wrong data point in there. in the first graph the last data point shouldnt be in that graph, it should be in the "car idle/off graph" nice eye nathan
This seems like it will shield the intercooler a little bit but I would suspect that you decreasing the effeciency by coating the cooling surface or atleast the fins. I dont know if its possible due to cost and availability but id be curious about the difference between a "spray on" thermal coating versus a sublimated metal/ceramic thermal barrier spray (plasma spraying) as i mentioned to you in a PM.
i think i should be able to sneak a thermocoupler around the throttlebody hose to get some post-ic temps and hopefully put one in the ypipe somewhere to get pre-ic temps. only problem is right now i just have one thermocoupler reader.
now, does anyone know where i can get a longer thermocoupler?...i'm sick of having to tape the reading unit to the windshield cause the wire isnt long enough?
I read in SCC that Greddy did some testing and found that your average flat black paint like Krylon doesn't affect IC efficiancy. And they were working on a coating to improve it. This was a couple years ago, but very believable. When you spray your IC, you are only getting paint on the miniscule front portion. Think about how deep it is compared to how far the paint will get into the fins. I very interested in this Justin.
what datalogger are you using and what type of thermocouple is it? maybe I missed this, but what are you coating the IC with? are there engineering specifications available for it? I'd be interested in knowing it's exact thermal properties. any idea on the convective coefficient? another thing - do you have a way to measure either mass flow or volumetric flow across the IC?
once i set up the probes pre and post turbo i will go do some more testing. i'll be using engiuity logger to log some various variables. the coating is techlines thermal dispersant. i really dont know the technical makeup of the coating itself, sorry. any tips or hands on help would be appreciated for our next tests. i picked up the longer thermocouplers tonight and tomorrow i'll pick up a second control unit so we can run both couplers at the same time. now i just have to figure out how to slide the probes underneath the tb coupler and Ypipe hose to get it in the flow without leaking.
