Heat Wrap

[skateswitch97]

im thinking about getting some heat wrap and wraping my exhaust manifold, and im thinking about intake manifold since its that nice plastic piece of crap. ive been around enought to know that this will only make the slightest diff. in power, if that, but i want some thoughts on wrapping the intake manifold, even if its just to hide the plastic

[VanishingImage]

Ive heard mixed emotions on header wrap. But with some of your muscle cars at the track seem to use it some so I couldn't tell you 100% that its gonna help that much. Or if its even gonna be noticible at the track,youd first have to run consistant times then finally try a run with the stuff to see if the time got better

[skateswitch97]

what do you think about wrapping the intake mainfold? also like i said i know how mods like this goes, maybe like 2hp at the most, jsut trying to add up all the little things

[charlybrown]

your intake manifold, needs to disperce heat, wrapping it wouldnt do it any good, it probably cook ur gaskets..

u can wrap ur exhaust manis- but this causes them to crack faster (i have an EM shield on one of my rides).. you can coat them with that black ceramic powder... this is done to keep in the heat.. the hotter the EM, the easier it flows... but the best performance results comes from Porting and polishing ur exhaust manis or getting custom made headers (straighter pipes)

[RocketMan]

Basically your intentions are to INHIBIT HEAT TRANSFER from the environment into your closed system, which in this case is your intake manifold. This is because the air from the outside is clearly colder than that of the intake's environment, which is the inside of your engine compartment.

The primary mode of heat transfer will be radiation since the air is moving much to fast within the manifold and much too slowly outside it to get a convection current worth worrying about. Therefore you want to keep radiation out.

As far as I'm aware, that white header wrap is designed to be a thermodynamic insulator, not a reflector. It inhibits convective/conductive heat flow from within a pipe. What you want is the reflective metalic tape that reflects radiation from the outside. The tape portion is corrugated and inhibits any convective/conductive heat that gets through the outer layer. Putting the white heat wrap on the intake will initially do the trick but may be worse after time. I say may cuz i haven't tried it but theoretically, it has no reflective attributes and good insulators have a tendency to have high heat capacities also meaning it will eventually get hot from conductive sources around it. Just some info you might find helpful.

[skateswitch97]

yeah that aswers my question very well, thanks guys, i think ill just save the money on something else, and i am trying to get a ported manifold but its not going good, i might see if i can get a custom header made at one of the local speed shops of something

[RocketMan]

I've got the metallic tape and I found the best place to put it is the obvious surface of the ram air tubing under the exhaust crossover pipe AND the curved surface of the ram scoop facing the engine. A surprising amount of radiant heat falls onto that. So far I wrapped some of my exposed A/C pipe with the tape and that surface. I plan to wrap the rest of the air tubing soon.

[Colin]

Header wraps are designed to keep the heat in the header to improve scavenging of the cylinders. Keeping the heat in the header allows the exhaust speed to remain high . This should also keep the engine compartment cooler . Due to problems with exhaust wraps it is probably better to use a thermal coating instead .... ;)