painting an intercooler
 

does this help or hurt it? I would think it would hurt it in the fact it would retain heat, but could be wrong. I'm not thinking of painting one, but have seen others do it and was curious.

Unless the paint had better heat rejection properties than aluminum then it would hurt. But how much? I can't imagine a lot since the OEMs paint them all the time.

If you search there is a thread going all over this and doing lots of math. It comes down to yes. It will technically hurt it. But if all you do is a light coat or 2 you wont notice a diffrence. Maybe if you dip the whole thing in a bucket of paint and let it sit then pull it out it would horribly make a diffrence but just a light coat of spray paint wont effect it.

Painted mine before i fitted it:

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d4...Picture002.jpg

Might have made a slight difference but it still works no problems.

a thin coat of paint will have virtually no impact on an intercooler especially if you just fog the front surface you can see and not the interstitial area between the fins/plates/bars/etc.

basically hit it at a low angle.

I plan to paint one side of my satin black... if I change my mind I'll just flip it over :)

maybe i'll do mine glow in the dark or something

mines painted