Painting intercoolers

[lumpy]

I refuse to mention intercoolers but am willing to talk paint.

Yes it's a polymer (whether water or solvent borne) and thus when cured has similar properties to plastic. Yes there are various pigments in there - for black it's generally carbon black. Extender pigments like aluminium silicates, calcium carbonate, barium sulphate are used to reduce gloss and increase solids. Yes it forms a thin film in the 10's of microns range, however radiator black is piss thin and very low in solids so it's probably sub 10 micron. I expect there would be a minor insulative effect from it. Of course we could start chucking various funky IRR pigments in there and increase it's insulative properties, or perhaps create some ultra fine surface texture to increase surface area but these are beside the point.

I suspect most auto bits are painted black is because it's cheap and gives a uniform appearance.

[gearb0x]

will the effects of having the paint on the intercooler really be insanely noticeable? loss of like half a horsepower or will it actually be considerably felt?

The noticable difference is most likely similar to the difference having a shit before you go for a drive has

[lumpy]

Just pondering this thread today and thought "what could you do to improve cooling efficiency of radiators/intercoolers"?. Obviously if most heat is lost through conduction then increasing the cooler surface area and reducing speed of airflow through it will increase conduction potential. This will hold true until the efficiency maximum is reached and you start to get heat soak. Possibly increasing the surface area by lightly abrading the fins will add a miniscule benefit. Or increasing the distance the air has to travel (100mm vs 76mm core thickness) will be of greater benefit. It's an interesting point to discuss, because in most cases the air that passes thru and intercooler then has to be used to cool a radiator. In a practical sense getting maximum heat transfer from an intercooler will affect your radiator's cooling performance.

[kingmick]

Lay them back at and angle.

[deviant]

Why not just go to Repco and buy the black mesh (or blue or red) and stick it in the opening on your car? Its not going to really affect the air flow through the opening and will do a decent job of hiding your IC.

[lumpy]

Lay them back at and angle.

This for seperating airflow across cooler and radiator? Or to increase air path through cooler? Or just for packaging considerations?

I imagine some decent ducting/sealing would improve intercooler and radiator efficiency dramatically.

[kingmick]

Increasing air path! Yes ducting can help in a big way, cooler and rad should be together to make them both work properly and just the right thickness to do the job properly, this reduces heat transfer etc.

Deviant, any mesh hurts flow. the more open the better, but none at all is the best but is not safe{damage to cores} most of the time.

[HAVABEER]

bit of a silly idea but could you rig up sort of a thermo-fan setup to really suck/blow the air through and piss it off really quickly (probably not fundamental space wise)

[kingmick]

You can if you are going to do burnouts, but its causes to much restiction for most types of driving speeds.