heat management inside race car, header wrap or ceramic coating or heat shield ?
 

inside of my race car is HOT. especially the foot well. my right foot was burning from racing 90 minutes. I had to move my right feet over to the left, using 1/2 of the pedal only. I still got burnt a little when I got out. and I already have those Coolmat inside the cabin.

reading the other thread about hot exhaust manifold. what's your opinion on:

1. header wrap ?
2. ceramic coating the header. which vendor does this ?
3. heat shield. Hustler recommends this on this other thread.

Pro and Con please.

thanks

That gold heat shielding seems be pretty good from what was said in the "hot exhaust manifold thread". But I would think that getting some airflow below the car where it's getting hot, (transmission tunnel) would help evacuate the heat.

Explain with pictures your "coolmat inside the cabin"

http://www.saferacer.com/koolmat-spe...productid=2064 ?

thanks. it is Koolmat, not Coolmat.
that's exactly what I got.

That's pretty nice. I used a piece of scrap carpet from an ebay carpet set with the insulation glued on the back, on the transmission tunnel only. I haven't had too many heat issues, it's much much better than without any protection. Then again the max I've seen is 30 minutes in 105* weather. What do you have to vent air into the cabin? At the same time I added the insulated carpet, I added NACA ducts on both triangle windows. That works amazingly too, and I'm sure helps a little bit to get some cool air exchanged out by your feet.

My setup, for visual reference:
Attachment 187786

what kind of insulation is that ?

I do have NACA ducts on both triangular windows. don't think it helps much with my feet.
but even then, I plan to remove those triangular windows. I feel the window opening is too small for my big head with HANS to squeeze through in a roll over.

Will, check out Gordon's car next time you see him. He added a duct straight from the windshield header area down to his feet and said it helped a lot.

Ceramic coating the header would help as well.

william, not sure if Hustler went into much detail, but we use a 21" long sheet of aluminized fiberglass mat and rivet it to the underside of the drivers side trans tunnel. I've never put a pyrometer on it, but must have dropped at least 200 degress with the mat added.

i'm not sure where gary@trackdog got the material, but it comes in a giant roll.

thanks. I've already ordered some heat shields tonite.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TXQOSK
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CEO5W8

I was hoping if some of you have experience with ceramic coating or header wrap. as it not only helps with cabin cooling, but also help with longevity of parts in engine compartment, at least in theory. I might also get 1 hp out of it !!

and it also don't add much weight as heat shields

Mine? It's carpet and insulation cut from an eBay miata carpet set. You can see the wear that's usually under your heels. Have you tried reflective foil tape under the car? That might help a lot, nice and light too.

You will now have "the hot setup" - Koolmat inside Thermotec outside. The adhesive on the thermotec will fail where it's closest to the downpipe. I reglued mine with contact cement (liquid nails), it turned brown but stayed stuck. I also did the whole drivers side & top of the tranny tunnel in Thermotec inside & out. With all that + Koolmat & carpet it still gets pretty hot in there.

What we all need is a proper heat shielding with air gaps and flow. Ideal setup would be a section that extends from the steering shaft hole on the firewall over to top of the tranny tunnel, and all the way back to the e-brake mechanism, attached with studs/nuts welded to the tub. A lot the OEM's use a dimpled aluminum that's easy to form, but I've never looked for it in the aftermarket.

In the meantime just keep layering the band aids...

You've been working too much and you're confused. I don't think that stuff works too well. I never used what you gave me....but I still have it.

I tried to use some of that foil tape and tunnel matt, but the real problem is on the firewall. The next time my engine comes out I'm covering the firewall and tunned in DEI tunnel mat. I put a hose from under the car to the WG to keep it cool and that's putting a lot more super-hot air on the firewall. I'm thinking about putting that hose behind the WG and pointing it forward to see if I can convince the air to go out the hood.

The tunnel mat is aluminum on top of 3mm of light padding and works really well on my hood. The intake side of the hood is warmer than the part over the turbo where the tunnel mat piece lives.

The matt that Wags speaks of works wonders... have used that method on two different applications and it does work. The key is to use spacers (washers) to set the matt off of the metal just a bit for air flow both from the trans to matt and air between metal and matt.
The Lemon's car had zero issues for discomfort with over 90 minute drive times each session.
My personal setup has been fine as well... foil bubble wrap on the inside tunnel attached with foil tape. Rhino lined over that and painted.

I stand corrected, ******.

Just sayin... since you chose not use it. :makeout:

if the cause is the header / turbo / downpipe. it would make more sense to header wrap / ceramic coat header, no ?
instead of band aid everything.

Sure. I had mine wrapped for a while, but then took it off after hearing horror stories from folks claiming it damaged even stainless when it gets wet. I didn't see any damage, just discoloring that was very hard to remove if at all in places from the burn in. Thinking about re-wrapping as well.

Strictly from a logic standpoint, any kind of shielding on the underside of the tunnel will work better than koolmat on the inside. Stopping heat from getting to the footwell in the first place has to be better than interior insulation of a footwell that is already hot.

So even though I have an LS1 in my Miata I will chime in since what I have works, and the OP asked about header wrap.

After bead blasting, I sprayed both headers with DEI high temperature ceramic paint and then cured the paint per their instructions. I then wrapped them carefully with header wrap and safety wire. I sprayed a thick layer of header wrap paint on top of that.

The downpipes (aluminized steel) are both wrapped with header wrap, back to about halfway along the transmission tunnel. I also have the stock carpet in the car.

With that setup I am having no problems with hot feet, or for that matter melting of anything in the engine compartment including the spark plug wires which are about 1" away from the headers. It is all holding up well to over a year of hard track use. Granted, it is not a turbo, but with 325 RWHP the engine is still dumping a lot of heat into the exhaust.