Either him or me. he would be dynoing it... so if he gives me the scan i can put it up.

 

Some cold side stuff

 

Are you still miggin? if so thats looking real good looks like u turned ur heat way down. Your welds are def improving. Think there is any negative affects using steel piping vs alum for the cold side if it was just painted?

 

the only downsides i can see are
a) weight, a cube foot of steel weighs 467 lbs, aluminum is only 168
b) aluminum dissipates heat MUCH faster than steel

 

Thanks. Yeah, i am still miggin. It helps to grind/smooth the welds down. before, if I saw a suspect area, i would just lay a bead over it. Now I grind it flush and relay a bead.

Like Adam said, steel will corrode versus aluminum (rusting), and steel is heavier. Aluminum dissipated heat better as well.

 

More pertainent, aluminum is much more expensive and difficult to work with. Requires an AC TIG welder.

Aluminum also sinks heat very efficiently.
High underhood temperatures can ADD heat to the cooler charge air. In the front of the car (think FMIC) aluminum pipe would run cold, in the engine bay it could run hot. In such a case you can see why piping material with high thermal conductivity could be worse.

 

thats an interesting concept, i have never thought of that.

You could get the radiant heat-reflectors and put around the aluminum piping to help, but that looks kind of ugly. Ceramic coating the hotside will also help.

im wondering what kind of gains we could get with a aluminum-copper intercooler. Copper is the second best thermal conductor behind silver,a luminum is behind copper so i think we could gain something there.

Jon, you have your engineering degree, get to work!

theres so much cool stuff we could use for cars, now how pratical is another story as the costs would go up tremendously probably.

example, your talking about the aluminum gaining heat fast in the engine bay....use inconel or any other nickel based alloy as it does not transfer heat for crap.

 

Coatings for the win (ceramic or PC)!

 

Stainless steel does not tranfer heat as quickly as aluminum and cools rapidly. Downside is cost and it's a strong metal. Any cutting or bending will not be easy compared to steel or aluminum. If you want pretty though, I'd take ss over aluminum unless you need lightweight.

 

I would imagine that underhood temp is much less than intake charge temp when moving. If that's the case then aluminum would reduce charge temp compared to steel because the HT coeff is greater. It would depend on which temp is greater - the gas in the pipe, or the atm. Heat moves from hot to cold.

This discussion actually fits well with the one on hot side plumbing. We want to retain heat in the hotside. And we want to remove heat from the cold side.

 

My air intake temps under boost were like 15 degrees above ambient. Much cooler than the underhood temps.
My intercooler outlet feels ice cold, and that same pipe going into the throttle body elbow is very warm to the touch (due to underhood heat saturation).

Heat simply moves to a colder region. In this case from the engine bay, through the intake pipe, and into the charge air.
A ceramic heat barrier coating like HPC would be very beneficial when used on the intercooler outlet pipe to the intake elbow. After the air leaves the intercooler and travels into the engine bay, it's obviously only going to heat up, not cool down further.

 

Great work! you keep getting better and better and for anyone considering buying one of his kits...He is by far one of the best people to do business with. Not that I would know or anything ; ) Its a shame I need to sell mine now. = (