Wrapping Intercooler Pipe?

[andrew h]

Just wondering if it is recommended to wrap the hotside of my newly installed ASE Front Mount intercooler pipes. After driving the cold side feels quite hot close to the engine & am wondering if I will prevent most of this by wrapping the hotside to lower engine bay temps. The hotside & coldside pipes are quite close to each other so I think there might be a fair bit of heat transfer.

Also, is there an easy way to measure the temperature drop before & after the intercooler?

Thankyou

 

[Old.Tony]

I would think the air moves a little too quickly through the pipe to get much benefit from insulation, but if your cost-of-installation is low (ie you get the stuff cheap and you do it yourself) then the very small benefit you gain won't need a complaint. You seriously won't notice the difference in either fuel consumption or performance - the intercooler at best provides only a relatively small difference in itself. It's still worth it - but with something that might provide a 5% improvement, and you're improving 5% of that 5% - your overall improvement goes up from 5% power to 5.25%.

Would I do it myself? Probably not. I'd replace the rubber hoses with metal piping first, to stop the air tubing from flexing (in either direction - expanding or collapsing). Next thing I'd spend money on is a misting system for the intercooler, to radically improve its thermal conductivity (and therefore its ability to transfer heat out of the inner airstream).

The only way to measure the temperature drop is to get a fast-response thermal probe into the inner airstream before and after. I'm sure there are performance shops that can do this.

 

[joshman]

I'd be wrapping the cold side, not the hot side, and if possible, put some heat shield between the two. The idea of insulation is to keep internal temperature more constant. By wrapping your hot side, your going to keep the air in there hotter. If you wrap the cold side, hopefully you'll keep the air inside that colder.

 

[tweak'e]

i would wrap hot side, simply because it heats anything close to the pipes. i know of a few people that where wrapping turbo intake pipes because it ran close to the output pipes, and got improvements in performance.

 

[Dave]

Wrapped the cool side of mine.

Made a slight difference. I think.

Maybe I imagined it to justify the effort. Haha.

 

[jap55s]

or use one of these

Pre-Intercooler Cooling Pipe

 

[Old.Tony]

I really think the air's moving too fast for something like the Pre-Intercooler Cooling Pipe to make much difference at all. The whole reason for the small tubes in the intercooler is to maximise the surface area to allow more heat exchange to occur. Having small tubes means that most of the passing air is exposed to the (relatively) cooler surface of the intercooler and the slower flow at the air/metal boundary (called 'laminar flow') only helps the exchange more.

The large tubes - like your intercooler piping - don't have anywhere near the surface area exposed to the airflow, and so they can only transfer a small amount of heat in either direction.

The MOST efficiency you could gain would be by insulating ALL of the air piping - even pre-turbo - and using a method of wetting the surface of the intercooler. Wetting this will cause the water to evaporate (which, with hot air moving inside, it will do fairly quickly) and the action of evaporating will cause the surface to cool.

I've seen misting systems for $300+ and I saw one for about $11 using a garden watering system mist sprayer fitted to a cheap wiper-washer bottle. The only criterion is to ensure that the water bottle is BELOW the sprayer, or gravity will cause the water to drain out of the bottle.

I had one mechanic suggest (for my Jaguar) that we add another airconditioning compressor that drove a pair of heat exchangers that sat in the air intake, cooling the air to about -40C. He showed me a pair of heat exchangers that were quite bulky and when we tried measuring it up to fit them in the engine bay, he discovered that the Jaguar is such a sleek car because there's no friggin' room in the engine bay with the 5.3L V12 in there as well, so he gave up on the idea. However, that's about the only way you can make this even better.

 

[RustyNav09]

you cna buy insulation stuff off ebay to wrap air con lines and stuff in fro cars. im sure there is one big enough to do some 2-2.5" piping. i looked at it to keep soe of the stuff under my bonnet takig less heat. but i would have to wrap the whole bonnet

 

[andrew h]

Thanks guys, still unsure what to do. I might try & wrap the cool side first with some sort of reflective tape (to deflect heat from the hot side & general heat within engine bay). I guess it would be nice to know how well the air is being cooled before & after the intercooler. Whilst the pipes feel hot on both sides it is hard to know what is happening inside without going to the trouble of fitting sensors etc.

 

[jap55s]

I've seen misting systems for $300+ and I saw one for about $11 using a garden watering system mist sprayer fitted to a cheap wiper-washer bottle. The only criterion is to ensure that the water bottle is BELOW the sprayer, or gravity will cause the water to drain out of the bottle.

lol. i first set up mine on my pulsar like that and water leaked..lol
good ol gravity

 

[gazza414]

or use one of these

Pre-Intercooler Cooling Pipe

Where would you put it ?....to heat the air up or cool it down????

 

[jap55s]

Lol . You serious.
If you have to ask. I suggest you don't make your own kit.

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner

 

[kempseyken]

I've done mine , like to think it does something.

 

[Tappet]

If anything wrap the exhaust manifold the turbo and short distance after it. I know that wouldn't be an easy mod. As Tony has mentioned the air is moving just to fast thru the intercooler pipes to be of any benifit.