Churnd

i've been thinking about this possibility all day. basically, since the 3.0 silencer mod replaces the rubber tubing with metal tubing, i was concerned with the metal getting too hot from the engine heat, resulting in a loss of horsepower. apparently if i used aluminum i wouldnt have to worry about that. but this sparked another idea. if the metal could be heated up, it could certainly be cooled down. and everybody knows the colder the air, the better it'll burn... producing more HP.

the question is, how do i cool the pipe? insulate it? i'm not that fond of header wrap because it traps moisture and i'd be worried about condensation getting inside the pipe. i was thinking more along the lines of something that could cool the pipe electrically. kind of like an electric heating pad, except to cool instead of heat. you could wrap the pad around the pipe, wire it up to the battery (with a switch even), and voila. instant cold air intake.

i did a search on intercoolers and toyotaperformance.com is in the process of designing one. but that's too much involved for me. i'd rather come up with something that runs off electricity. so if anybody could think of something that could help me out, let me know. i'm searching for possibilities but havent come up with anything yet.

Dr. Zhivago

Powder-coating the pipe reduces the heat transfer.

Just My .02
Dr. Z

Churnd

can i powdercoat the pipe myself?

Dr. Zhivago

Since you are asking this question, the answer is no. Seriously, you need special ovens and special materials to perform powder-coating.

Here's a few websites to get you started:

http://www.performancecoatings.com

http://www.finishlinecoatings.com

Both of these companies are in the Northwest.

Hope this helps.
Dr. Z

Corey

iTrader: (1)

Churnd, it should be low dollar to coat the pipe.
For example, my two sliderz would have been $100 at a few shops, but I would have had to strip the old paint off.

The guy who ended up doing mine was going to charge me $40 which is dirt cheap, but they ended up costing $75.
That was from the 3M Treads tape and the clear tape I had on them.
Much more labor involved getting all the goop off.

I bet a local shop could powder coat your pipe for under $15.
They can do it when they have a run of other black items to shoot.

Robinhood150

Aluminum is one of the best conductors of heat, so if the engine is hot then the Al pipe will get hotter faster.

Do you mean condensation between the insulation and the pipe -- and that would lead to corrosion? If it's Al then the pipe won't corrode. If it's steel, then just paint it first.

I've heard somebody makes cooling diodes which might do what you want, electronically. But I don't know about the price or availability. FYI, prior to the semiconductor age what you are asking would have been thermodynamically impossible. The best solution would be to circulate water around the pipe, like wrap some copper wire around it and pipe water through it. The water would have to come from its own reservoir though, and it would need it's own radiator to get rid of the heat. Another solution is to pipe outside air around the intake pipe.

No, you can't powder coat it yourself. Oh, and you don't want to paint it black. Silver is the best (but I don't think you can powdercoat silver), white next.

Steve

Dr. Zhivago

Don't you think that unless we are talking about a large mass of Al, such as what might be used in a heat sink for a piece of electronic equipment, that Al is a poor conductor of heat? Other metals, such as Copper are far superior. A thin-walled tube of Al isn't going to xfer that much heat. I could be wrong, but when I mentioned this in an earlier thread, this is what I was referring to.

My .02
Dr. Z

Jay

Electricity is easily used to heat things up. Create a resistance, run some electricity through it, and viola an instant heater. However, doing the opposite is not true. The only way engineers have been able to cool something down has been by circulating some sort of coolant, or refrigerant around the item to be cooled. (ie cooling system, A/C system.)

I will add that pressure and tempature are directly related. If you pressurize something, its tempature will increase. And the same for the reverse. In all Air conditioning systems you have a High Pressure side, and a Low pressure side. The refrigerant is pressurized by the a/c compressor. It passes through the a/c condensor, air flow from the front of the vehicle cools the refigerant (like in a radiator). It then passes through a small hole (an orfice), which drops the pressure (now the low pressure side of the air conditioning system). This low pressure refrigerant is then passed through the Evaporator. The refrigerant then absorbs heat from the cabin of the vehicle. It then travels back to the a/c compressor, becomes pressurized again.

As you can probably already see, its not so simple to cool something down, as it is to heat something up.

Jay

Churnd

apparently, i'm in a little over my head. i guess it's not gonna be as simple as i thought. i'd have to create a whole custom intercooler system, and being a college student, i don't have the time nor the money. otherwise, i'd think it through into more detail. but i guess i'll just settle for some kind of method for keeping the heat away/off the pipe.

i don't think there are any shops around here that'll powdercoat something for me. so i was thinking about just painting it with some kind of temperature related paint that would help insulate the pipe. would a high temperature paint work? then cover the pipe with some header wrap, or do you think the header wrap would invite the heat in?

Robinhood150

Ah... Dr Z, I wasn't quite sure what churnd was refering to, about using Al. Now it makes a little more sense.

Heat conduction is a material property which is constant. The only thing that limits how fast 2 objects of similar material heat up is the mass and the geometry (there are other things but this is all we care about). Assuming the shapes are the same, that leaves only mass. The smaller the mass, the faster it will heat up. Think about when you grab an empty soda can. A couple seconds after you pick it up, the can is warm. Pick up a cylinder of Al with a thicker wall thickness and it will take longer to heat up.

Yes, I would agree that Copper conducts heat better than Al.

Steve

Dr. Zhivago

Alrighty, Steve. Thanks for the reply!

Dr. Z

Dr. Zhivago

The header wrap would not invite the heat in. I used that stuff on the intake tubing on my Supra. I also wrapped my turbo with it. Made a world of difference in underhood temperatures. I personally don't see a problem using like you want to.

Dr. Z

BTOWN4RUNNER

Is there a way to possibly tap into the radiator and use it's antifreeze as a way to cool it. Maybe put a hose coming out of the radiator, wrap it around the tube several times and put it back into the radiator. I saw an amp in crutchfield did something like that to keep it cool. I am not a technician at all, so this may be a far-fetched idea, but I was just thinking out loud! :fireman:

Adam F

Why not try to find some plastic PVC pipe that fits, or some rubber hose?

Churnd

that's really not a bad idea. only problem is how are you gonna get the coolant to pump through the tube? plus i think that "treated" coolant at normal operating temps is still too hot for what we wanna do. i could be wrong.

Churnd

you'd have a helluva time finding a PVC pipe with an elbow that bends to the perfect angle that you need. if you used rubber hose, it'd have to have bending points like that of exhaust piping you can buy in auto shops and bend yourself. that would stop up the flow a little bit. the smoothest possible flow can be had from bent metal tubing, which is what you want to achieve.

jx94148

Even 'cool' coolant is around 180* at operating temp, it would heat up the pipe to that temp. Header wrap would do the best job keeping engine heat out of the intake. Anyway the air is not in there long enough to heat up much at all, even in an un-insulated pipe. At high RPM its probably less that 2 seconds from the time the air enters the intake at the headlight to the time it enters the throttle body. I don't think that's long enough to add enough heat to matter insulated or not.

jx94148

A couple more random thoughts...

Intercoolers are for forced induction motors only, Turbos especially, the compression of the turbo or supercharger heats the air considerably, the compressed air goes through a radiator-like heat exchanger where it cools and then to the intake manifold. Running un-compressed air through one would totally defeat the purpose of the intake mod.

Powdercoating is kinda like sraying molten plastic onto a piece of metal where it solidifies. To do it right you have to wash the metal in acid of some kind to remove any oil or anything that would keep the plastic from sticking. It will help insulate the pipe a little, not much.

Churnd

the air would not have time to heat up, right... but if the pipe gets warm after driving a while, that might affect it even if just the slightest bit.

williemon

Thicker material will take longer to cool down also. What you want, might be a peltier cooler. Hook it up to 12v dc and it gets ice cold. May need several. The last time I looked in on these was a couple years ago when I was big into overclocking computer cpu chips. Look into www.overclockers.com and you might find links to coolers.

(from overclockers.com)

"PELTIER BASICS "


"The following explanation covers the basics and is somewhat simplified - it not intended to be an exhaustive nor so rigorous an explanation as to be unreadable. "

"A peltier is an electronic package that consists of two sides - the hot side and cold side. By energizing the peltier, this package transfers heat from the cold side to the hot side. The hot side requires a heatsink to move the heat from the hot side to someplace else - if not, the cold side gets hot. The more efficient the removal of heat from the hot side, the colder the cold side will become. It is not uncommon to get a 65 C difference between the two sides under no load conditions. "

"Peltier cooling consists of three basic components (see diagram below): "

"o The CPU, with heat output measured in watts;
o The Peltier, with cooling power measured in watts;
o The Heatsink, either air cooled or water cooled, with efficiency measure as C/W."





My thought on a cooler running pipe would be to go double wall. The outside wall, a low heat conductive material will sheild the heat from the inner pipe that flows the air. Also you could duct outside air into the void that the outside pipe creates. Let the air flow free from vehicle motion or add a 12v fan.

All this said, will that little bit of pipe matter since the manifold and plenum is aluminum and exposed to the heat?:alien: