Laura
Is you manifold painted black, white or rust red. White is probebly the
best colour of exhaust insulation because it does not radiate inferred.
Next to insulation this is the best method of keeping your exhaust warm.
Try insulating the exhaust of your car, thats where most of the heat from
the engin goes. The radiator only deals with a fraction of the heat that
exscapes from the exhaust. I know I did some research using the exhaust
gasses to drive a heat pump (caravan fridge type thing) for Spit air
conditioning. The only problem being where to put the bits, condenser etc.
I digress.
I have no problem with cooling my car, the temperature gadge in summer at a
trafic speed above 25mph is just over 1/2 without heater a needels width.
With heater it's exactly half. And thats with the engin driven fan taken
off. I put an electric fan on insted, covering up a 12 square inches of
standard radiator, I don't need the fan unless I am in realy bad stop start
traffic. It's opperated manualy even though I have a raditor switch,
because I can't be bothered to wire the relay into the ignition, with out it
running streight of the battery you get a flat battery in wet weather. (Yes
I found out the hardway)
One thing I have noticed is that if you switch on the fan the temperature
begins to rise for abit untill rapidly falling. I presume this is caused by
the fluid route chainging due to themodynamics.
Anyway exhaust insulation wrap will keep the exhaust gasses warm. These
produce some major advantages, more unburnt hydrocarbons are burn lowering
emmissions. Warm gasses flow faster getting them out of the engin quicker,
leading to a cooler engin bock. You exhaust gets warmer quicker, purging
condensation in the back box which on short journys leads to rust.
I have actualy contemplated insulating the whole system on my car once I
convert to a stainless sports system. Tubular manifold etc, but quite
silencers. No ones is going to be able to see its stain less, but I wont
ever have to chainge it.
James
|