Can anyone tell me if there is a benefit to heat wrappingthe pipes on Stillen's Gen 3 intake tubes? It's crossed my mind many times to deflect some of the external heatgenerated in the engine bay as well as up front near the radiator but I'm notsure if this will increase cooler air temps or heat the tubes themselves. The wraps claim to resist 90% of radiant heat, they sell the wrapping at Auto Zone relatively cheap for possibly cooler tubing. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

 

Bump for some info!

 

i havent heard of anyone wrapping the Stillen Gen 3

 

Do it and let us know...

 

Its called wrapping them in reflective heat tape. the whole idea behind this is to pull in more cooler air. Because of the Gen 3 pipes being made from aluminum it can soak in a lot of heat this is known as "heat soak". The when you wrap the pipes with reflective heat tape it acts as a heat sink allowing the pipes to stay cooler and allowing more cooler air to travel into the engine. A lot of hard core turbo guys do this. I bought some RHT after I felt how hot my intake pipes were getting from a normal drive but I have yet to install them. If I ever get around to it ill take some measurements with my digital inferred thermometer.

 

A lot of people do it on the z. It helps but minor difference IMO

 

If your talking about the "silver tape". that wont do anything. that stuff is used to patch holes or taping duct wrap together. only insulator ive seen on cars that seems to work is something like JEGS Lava Exhaust Wrap. Im a heat and frost insulator, I work on commercial heating and cooling systems (even nukes). I dont work on cars. But in order for insulation to work there needs to be an air pocket or space between the heated space and whatever you want to keep cool. so the silver tape wont work because it will heat up as fast as the pipe.

 

Mine is Gold.

I posted this the other day in another thread but I'll share it here again.



I've been monitoring my intake air temp with DashCommand before wrapping the tubes but I haven't checked to see the air temp after. I'll hook up DashCommand tomorrow on the way home from work (when it's ~100 degrees) and report back. However, I will say that before wrapping the tubes, I wasn't able to leave my palm anywhere on the intake for more than 2 second after letting the car sit for a couple minutes in the garage. Now I can keep my palm on the tubes as long as I want. The bottom of my laptop I'm using right now is hotter.

A closer look.

 

taviooo,

I didn't end up using the silver tape. I knew there was to be some type of barrier to get any benifit. There is a 4mm thick barrier between the shiny/reflective sliver side and the adhesive portion, with some sort of cross strand material in between not sure of the material. I picked up two 12"x 24" heat wrap packages that, per packaging, said for use on headers and exhaust, battery, etc. I didn't go with the silver tape as I know would provide no barrier from the heat, looked to me like that stuff was just crome tape.

Here is the product from Auto Zone: Thermo Tec/12 x 24 in. adhesive backed heat barrier (13575) | Heat Shield Material | AutoZone.com


The car is at Infiniti right now getting DBA's and new pads but I'll let you know what the Scan Gauage intake temps read once I get the car back.

 

No, there's really no benefit of this. Why you ask....do this....

Go out on the track or even the highway, to some hard pulls and get the engine temps up there for a good 10-20 minutes. Pull over and pop your hood and touch your intake tubing. You'll notice they don't get hot what so ever. There's so much air/room where the tubing goes, the air that is sucked through the piping isn't in there long enough to really heatsoak, nor is the intake piping thin enough to really absorb heat.

 

Not true in the city. Slower traffic, stop and go, and traffic lights cause the engine to heat soak pretty good, especially where I am in the summer. Obviously it would cool to some degree once I get on the highway but not everyone uses highways for their daily commutes. That being said, you'd benefit more from this mod DD, not racing.

 

Also consider this to be helpful keeping the intake tubes cooler between races. The downtime in staging lines cause heatsoak, which is why you'll see even professional racers with ice packs. By the time it cools down even a degree (in a drag race), the race is over.

So is it worth it? Maybe, maybe not. I think that would depend on where you live and how you drive/race. Is it expensive? Hell yes.

 

Z1 offers the Kit in powder coated pipes !