Prevent engine bay heat

[ez12a]

I wanted to do it


I wanted to do it and started by doing some research. Found lots of positive videos but after seeing this video i decided not to do it. The video may help people decide. Hope it helps -

I think this video illustrates perfectly why you shouldn't wrap heat producing pipes with effectively insulating material. heat will conduct to connected parts and cause other issues. This is a known characteristic of "turbo blankets". The turbo will warm up quicker with a blanket.

However, wrapping your intake tract or compartmentalizing it will help insulate it against heat producing parts, and why generally non-alloy intakes (stock) run cooler than alloy piped intakes (i.e. injen)

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[amurciano]

I always had the thought of adding some sort of fans or ventilation fans to suck heat out of engine bay. Or to create pressure that pushes heat our more.
Has anyone done something like this or heard such a thing. Maybe putting huge radiator fans or something??

 

[Lust]

I've spent countless hours of research on this topic and I've consulted race shops and other knowledgeable people.

For maximum heat reduction you want to keep the hot parts hot and the cold parts cold "duh"

This means: turbo blanket, thermal coating on hot parts, thermal wrap on hot parts, reflective tape or heat shielding on cold parts. Turbo blankets and heat wrap ARE beneficial if done correctly.

I personally am doing the following:

PTP turbo blanket
RV6 ceramic coated catted DP wrapped in DEI titanium minus the cat.
RV6 ceramic coated FP wrapped in DEI titanium
DEI reflect-a-gold on entire intake box and inter cooler pipes.
DEI heat shield above FP flex joint to protect oil pan
Free flowing front grill
Varis hood
PWR radiator
HKS oil cooler

 

[AdamD19DFK8]

I've spent countless hours of research on this topic and I've consulted race shops and other knowledgeable people.

For maximum heat reduction you want to keep the hot parts hot and the cold parts cold "duh"

This means: turbo blanket, thermal coating on hot parts, thermal wrap on hot parts, reflective tape or heat shielding on cold parts. Turbo blankets and heat wrap ARE beneficial if done correctly.

I personally am doing the following:

PTP turbo blanket
RV6 ceramic coated catted DP wrapped in DEI titanium minus the cat.
RV6 ceramic coated FP wrapped in DEI titanium
DEI reflect-a-gold on entire intake box and inter cooler pipes.
DEI heat shield above FP flex joint to protect oil pan
Free flowing front grill
Varis hood
PWR radiator
HKS oil cooler

How well does putting gold tape on the cold side charge pipe and intercooler hose help combatting The rise of charge air temps under prolonged boost, say a 4th-5th gear pull where the turbo is spun up for a long time and heats up the charge air. I don't know if modifying the MAP temperature sensor is worth doing, IAT will lower under partial.

 

[Lust]

How well does putting gold tape on the cold side charge pipe and intercooler hose help combatting The rise of charge air temps under prolonged boost, say a 4th-5th gear pull where the turbo is spun up for a long time and heats up the charge air. I don't know if modifying the MAP temperature sensor is worth doing, IAT will lower under partial.

I’d have to double check but under WOT in 4th and 5th I saw IAT1 temps drop to ambient or a few degrees above ambient. My cold side intercooler Pipe is left exposed right now and after speaking with DEI, I’ll be wrapping it in the next couple of days

 

[m_kluch]

I’d have to double check but under WOT in 4th and 5th I saw IAT1 temps drop to ambient or a few degrees above ambient. My cold side intercooler Pipe is left exposed right now and after speaking with DEI, I’ll be wrapping it in the next couple of days

I will be wrapping my cold side pipes as well. I think doing this is very underrated. The high engine bay temps heat up everything under the hood. After the IC cools down the air going through it wouldn't you want to protect that air from getting hot again before going into the engine? Everybody emphasizes wrapping the intake and hot side pipes and thats fine but the cool side pipes need to be insulated or protected from getting hot as well.

To the guy that was confused about ptp blankets on the intake pipe..... The ptp blankets and other thermal blankets or wraps are not designed to keep heat in. They are designed to insulate (keep things from changing in temperature). Putting them on something that produces heat will keep that thing from losing heat and putting it on something cool will keep it from getting hot if theres hot air around it.

 

[Lust]

I will be wrapping my cold side pipes as well. I think doing this is very underrated. The high engine bay temps heat up everything under the hood. After the IC cools down the air going through it wouldn't you want to protect that air from getting hot again before going into the engine? Everybody emphasizes wrapping the intake and hot side pipes and thats fine but the cool side pipes need to be insulated or protected from getting hot as well.

To the guy that was confused about ptp blankets on the intake pipe..... The ptp blankets and other thermal blankets or wraps are not designed to keep heat in. They are designed to insulate (keep things from changing in temperature). Putting them on something that produces heat will keep that thing from losing heat and putting it on something cool will keep it from getting hot if theres hot air around it.

I actually wrapped my HKS cold side intercooler pipe today. Didn't notice a huge difference actually. It still eventually soaked up to 130-140F. I'll have to see if it will run cooler on my normal commute.

 

[m_kluch]

I actually wrapped my HKS cold side intercooler pipe today. Didn't notice a huge difference actually. It still eventually soaked up to 130-140F. I'll have to see if it will run cooler on my normal commute.

Im sure it helped. Cant argue with science/physics. If you have cold air going through the pipe and hot air on the outside of it then every bit of insulating will help.

Heres an analogy that might help people. In 100 degree weather a house with no insulation in it’s walls will heat up the air inside faster than one with insulated walls. When you turn on the air conditioning in your home you are cooling air and trying to keep the inside air cooler than the 100 degree outside air. This is like what the intercooler does. It tries to cool hot air coming from the turbo and sends it through the pipes (inside of your home) to the engine.
Wrapping your turbo, exhaust, getting a vented hood, larger grille are ways of reducing the hot air thats causing all of the problems. On the other hand, wrapping intake piping, putting up heat shields and getting a larger intercooler are ways of reducing the negative effects of all of that engine bay heat. Insulating your homes walls vs telling god to turn the heat down outside. Both ways of going about it will help in the end.

 

[Lust]

Im sure it helped. Cant argue with science/physics. If you have cold air going through the pipe and hot air on the outside of it then every bit of insulating will help.

Heres an analogy that might help people. In 100 degree weather a house with no insulation in it’s walls will heat up the air inside faster than one with insulated walls. When you turn on the air conditioning in your home you are cooling air and trying to keep the inside air cooler than the 100 degree outside air. This is like what the intercooler does. It tries to cool hot air coming from the turbo and sends it through the pipes (inside of your home) to the engine.
Wrapping your turbo, exhaust, getting a vented hood, larger grille are ways of reducing the hot air thats causing all of the problems. On the other hand, wrapping intake piping, putting up heat shields and getting a larger intercooler are ways of reducing the negative effects of all of that engine bay heat. Insulating your homes walls vs telling god to turn the heat down outside. Both ways of going about it will help in the end.

I 100% understand all of that... but numbers don't lie. The original reason I didn't wrap my intercooler pipe in the first place was because it was polished aluminum. That in itself is already a great material at reflecting heat. My guess is that the gold tape isn't significantly better at reflecting heat than the HKS IC pipe. Like I said, I still need to do more testing.

 

[amurciano]

Im sure it helped. Cant argue with science/physics. If you have cold air going through the pipe and hot air on the outside of it then every bit of insulating will help.

Heres an analogy that might help people. In 100 degree weather a house with no insulation in it’s walls will heat up the air inside faster than one with insulated walls. When you turn on the air conditioning in your home you are cooling air and trying to keep the inside air cooler than the 100 degree outside air. This is like what the intercooler does. It tries to cool hot air coming from the turbo and sends it through the pipes (inside of your home) to the engine.
Wrapping your turbo, exhaust, getting a vented hood, larger grille are ways of reducing the hot air thats causing all of the problems. On the other hand, wrapping intake piping, putting up heat shields and getting a larger intercooler are ways of reducing the negative effects of all of that engine bay heat. Insulating your homes walls vs telling god to turn the heat down outside. Both ways of going about it will help in the end.

I always thought that the heat that is causing things to heat up besides items around turbo and dp, were coming from convection. Things like turbo and dp will get hot and radiate heat out, and this will heat up air.
So what won't the hot air eventually heat up the insulation then heating up the pipe. and then prevent that heat from escaping, the only place that extra heat can go is towards inside of tube and to the air inside of tube. Heat travels from hot to cold.
I get both viewpoints, but I still don't get how the heat will escape the pipe when it does heat up.
Even wraps and insulation heat up to and will eventually reach the same temperature as the air around, its only a matter of time.

The way I see it in my head is like the following:
You have a pipe in engine bay with cold air going through it which is surrounded by hot air.
Lets say the air inside of tube before cold engine is turned on is 70F as well as pipe temp and engine bay temp.
Now when engine is turned on everything starts to heat up after 10min, for arguments sake, lets say engine bay heats up to 130F, and now pipe is 100F and air inside of pipe is now 90F.
Now lets say you drive around for 30 min and engine bay is 140F and pipe remains at a constant 120F and air inside is 110F. Lets also say this is the time it took for everything to reach equilibrium.

Now the pipe is has 1 thing heating and 2 things cooling at the same time, engine bay air is heating, air flow in engine bay is also cooling while driving, and air inside is cooling the pipe from the air entering intake. Its like if you were outside in the desert that is 100F with not wind, you will heat up, but if it were windy with same temp you would still heat up but not as much, hotter wind is better than no wind. SO the engine bay air is heating it up, but the circulating air when driving keeps that hot air from heating it up further.

Now if the pipe is wrapped, it will take longer for pipe to reach equilibrium, lets say it will take 60min as opposed to 30min for the pipe to reach the same temp. This is a good thing because the wrap prevented pipe from heating up quicker when it started off cold.
But for this same reason, it will be harder for 1 out of the 2 ways that this pipe would naturally cool down to get cooled by air circulating around pipe.

When driving, the air in engine bay gets circulated and won't be able to cool down the insulation enough to in turn cool down the pipe. It might cool the insulation wrap but for that cooler insulation wrap to cool the pipe down would be longer. Another way to look at it is the heat transfer with wrap has a lag, when the pipe is cold and heating up there is a lag of the heat transfer which is good, but there would also be a lag in the pipe from going from hot to cold.

This is my thought process but I could be exaggerating the cooling done by air around pipe and be wrong entirely, but this is what I think would happen.
I would hope that the wrap would help and not hurt. I also think there is a difference in insulating intake inlet versus intercooler piping, since the intake inlet is closer to top and can get the hottest.

With all of this being said, which types of insulation, wraps, blankets or relfective tape provide the best reduction in heat and in which pipes??

 

[amurciano]

For example, is the intake inlet pipe best covered with reflective tape or blanket, for this I would assume you want to reflect radiant heat from turbo and dp.??

For intercooler pipes, would wrap be better to insulate from convective heat.??

 

[m_kluch]

Now the pipe is has 1 thing heating and 2 things cooling at the same time, engine bay air is heating, air flow in engine bay is also cooling while driving, and air inside is cooling the pipe from the air entering intake. Its like if you were outside in the desert that is 100F with not wind, you will heat up, but if it were windy with same temp you would still heat up but not as much, hotter wind is better than no wind. SO the engine bay air is heating it up, but the circulating air when driving keeps that hot air from heating it up further.

Now if the pipe is wrapped, it will take longer for pipe to reach equilibrium, lets say it will take 60min as opposed to 30min for the pipe to reach the same temp. This is a good thing because the wrap prevented pipe from heating up quicker when it started off cold.
But for this same reason, it will be harder for 1 out of the 2 ways that this pipe would naturally cool down to get cooled by air circulating around pipe.

When driving, the air in engine bay gets circulated and won't be able to cool down the insulation enough to in turn cool down the pipe. It might cool the insulation wrap but for that cooler insulation wrap to cool the pipe down would be longer. Another way to look at it is the heat transfer with wrap has a lag, when the pipe is cold and heating up there is a lag of the heat transfer which is good, but there would also be a lag in the pipe from going from hot to cold.

With all of this being said, which types of insulation, wraps, blankets or relfective tape provide the best reduction in heat and in which pipes??

I don't agree with the argument that circulating air under the hood is cooling the intake air. It will only reduce the rate at which it can heat up. Even when driving and the air being exchanged a little under the hood, it is still hotter than the air inside the intake pipes so it can only heat the pipes. The pipes get cooled from the inside out by the cool outside air going through them. Even after sitting in traffic and heat soaking for a while, the inside surface of an intake pipe will be cooler with insulation than it would have been without insulation as long as the engine is on and outside air is flowing through it.

If a person wouldn't have sweat on their skin in a hot desert than the wind wouldn't cool them at all. An oven with a fan inside doesn't take longer to bring the food up to temperature. It only distributes the heat more evenly.

 

[amurciano]

I don't agree with the argument that circulating air under the hood is cooling the intake air. It will only reduce the rate at which it can heat up. Even when driving and the air being exchanged a little under the hood, it is still hotter than the air inside the intake pipes so it can only heat the pipes. The pipes get cooled from the inside out by the cool outside air going through them. Even after sitting in traffic and heat soaking for a while, the inside surface of an intake pipe will be cooler with insulation than it would have been without insulation as long as the engine is on and outside air is flowing through it.

If a person wouldn't have sweat on their skin in a hot desert than the wind wouldn't cool them at all. An oven with a fan inside doesn't take longer to bring the food up to temperature. It only distributes the heat more evenly.

Makes more sense now talking through it all. Maybe the under hood air doesn't cool the intake air but it reduces the amount of heat the metal pipe heats up (which is another form of energy being removed, anything that heats up less is another way of saying cooling), maybe its not the best cooling but it does cool in some sense which is all I was really worried about. And whatever that cooling is, 3-4 degrees if it is that, would not be able to occur as fast with insulation.
But what you said make more sense that most of the cooling happens inside of the pipe from cold air entering and for that reason I would lean more towards the insulation.


SO what would be best for inlet intake pipe, and for inter cooler pipes, insulation versus reflective tape? Also, I was thinking of doing a turbo blanket forsure and also I saw a blanket for dp that goes under the heat sheild, I would much rather have this then to wrap the pipe with would go bad after some time, the PTP blankets seems more robust and long term.
I have heard rumors that ptp blanket for intake inlet and turbo has issues because turbo blanket makes contact with intake blanket. SO is it better to just use reflective tape of intake inlet? And then wrapping intercooler piping?

 

[Lust]

Makes more sense now talking through it all. Maybe the under hood air doesn't cool the intake air but it reduces the amount of heat the metal pipe heats up (which is another form of energy being removed, anything that heats up less is another way of saying cooling), maybe its not the best cooling but it does cool in some sense which is all I was really worried about. And whatever that cooling is, 3-4 degrees if it is that, would not be able to occur as fast with insulation.
But what you said make more sense that most of the cooling happens inside of the pipe from cold air entering and for that reason I would lean more towards the insulation.


SO what would be best for inlet intake pipe, and for inter cooler pipes, insulation versus reflective tape? Also, I was thinking of doing a turbo blanket forsure and also I saw a blanket for dp that goes under the heat sheild, I would much rather have this then to wrap the pipe with would go bad after some time, the PTP blankets seems more robust and long term.
I have heard rumors that ptp blanket for intake inlet and turbo has issues because turbo blanket makes contact with intake blanket. SO is it better to just use reflective tape of intake inlet? And then wrapping intercooler piping?

Heat tape should be used if you need to fit tight clearances or have an abstract shape. Heat shield should be used on flatter surfaces that have room for a thicker insulation material. I will tape my inlet pipe eventually after I decided to keep it stock or buy the PRL Ti inlet. Another thing I will do is possibly look at adding more reflective material on the side of the air box closest to the engine. I felt the entire air box by hand and all of it was cool to the touch except that side. I also felt the area where the IAT2 sensor is and it was cool. The silicone inlet tube and stock aluminum inlet tube were scorching hot. Which makes sense because the turbo and downpipe are right there.

 

[m_kluch]

Did some wrapping over the weekend. Waiting on the turbo blanket to come in.