A New and Improved Idea!!!!!!
 

There is a company called Thermo Tech (I think thats the name) that makes an insulation wrap to go around your headers or parts of your exhaust that are close to vital parts (CV Boots!). Thermo Tech claims that if you wrap your headers in their insulation your engine compartment temperatures drop by 75%. What is the temperature around the airbox normally? Can someone test this? If this creates a significant enough of a drop in temperatures you can cut away the whole top of your airbox and still leave the pipe that vents in cool air on to the filter and you can have the best of both worlds. You also save that passenger side motor mount by doing this too. Am I on to something here? I'll see if I can get the website of this company and post it. Your thoughts?

I have a friend with a highly modded Honda Prelude. He recently had his header ceramic coated by HPC coatings. The differnece in engine compartment temp is astonishing. I wonder if they can coat Turbochargers...?

Yes, header wrap is what you want to use...

And if this stuff was as good as they claim, than I'd think factory would've used it too...

But than again, I've seen MANY tuners use this stuff on the headers of turbos to reduce lag, since the gasses are hotter at the turbo, and reduce underhood temps, possibly increasing intercooler efficiency.

Might be worth a try, but factory put metal heat shields around the motor mounts, and if they are in place, the updated motor mounts should be pretty good.

Overall might be worth a try, specially around the muffler, near the CV joint...
Ahmet

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It's all the driver...

Pilot, my "Yes" was for the original post...

I don't know of a tuner who does ceramic coating for turbos, but the headers on a 951 can be ceramic coated, but header wrap is used because of ease, and cost reasons, usually just as effective, not as pretty...

As for internal turbo coating, Garett is working on one... The plan it to be a turbo capable of producing boost at idle, yet not running out of steam until past redline, and use fancy metals, including titanium for the turbine itself, for astonishing throttle response from the turbo, very close to a naturally aspirated engine...

However, it will have it's price, about 4-5k, the turbo is NOT out yet...
Ahmet

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It's all the driver...

Yes, ceramic coating is available for turbochargers. If you go to http://www.turbocharged.com/ and look at the menu on the left, under where it says "new" there's a link that says "ceramic coating". It doesn't say anything about it, just "prices available upon request" and it has a photo of an example.

been told by an expert that putting exhaust wrap on the headers is not a good idea especially the turbocharged car..they say that the headers gets weak and it will crystallised...however...since i didn't follow their advise and removed the heat shield i never had any problems(yet) and i spray it every often.....

I've heard that the header insulation wrap holds in heat and can crack the header. The rationale is that heat cannot escape with the wrap on, so the metal weakens.

This is what I've heard, it may be false. Can anyone expand?

It's simple physics that if you insulate something and therefore decrease the heat elsewhere, than the heat must go up somewhere else. These are just insulators and don't lower the heat produced. Therefore the headers absorb all the heat not transferred. If this is a danger or not however, I have no idea.

Well, I don't want to comment, since I haven't used this myself...

However, they do keep the heat inside, but the headers should be more than able to cope with that! And on a turbo it WILL increase performance. However, the early turbo manifolds have been problematic, so I can't really recommend it.

I will add two things though, I will definately use it on my car, and a lot of european tuners use this technique, not just on japanese turbo cars, but on the 951 too...
Ahmet

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It's all the driver...

See my post on page 2. I did this exact test two weekends ago.

I don't think I would do anything to the headers to change their temperature. During design, the temperature and shape of the header is matched in relation to the block temperature so the thermal expansion is such that metal fatigue is minimized for a given shape. Metals are only good for so many loadings and unloadings. If the swing in stress levels is increased, the life expectancy falls precipitously. Metal fatigues both from mechanical stress as well as thermal stress.

Putting tape on the exhaust near the CV joints would do no harm. But don't put it on the headers by the block. You will shorten their life.

Read the reference I cited above about air intake temperatures when the car is moving. I was surprised by the results. Don't mean to sound preachy but headers are expensive.

Hey Hoff,
Remember the 908 we saw at Porsche fest? The headers were wrapped on it, and the Corvette that was there. Since both of these cars were full blown race cars used for endurance racing ( '73 LeMans ), I would say it had some advantage. Since weight is everything in racing, it wouldn't be there if it wasn't needed. But what was said was right, if you insulate at one point, the heat will migrate to some other point. Flowmaster said that their muffler would lower underhood temps, and they were right, the muffler gets much hotter than the stock unit! It has even turned the chrome on my tip blue. I thought about wrapping the exhaust from the header all the way back, including the muffler. But with my luck, my exhaust tip would glow red!