Toasted Feet

[DB6]

Any good stuff you guys like and where its best to put, I have toasted feet.

I used a product years ago on an old Vette, really nothing more that 2 layers of aluminum foil with ceramic dust sandwiched in the middle and sticky peel off off on one side (I think I got it from Summit) , this was for interior use, due to footwell limits any one try stuff out of the footwell? i.e engine bay.

Does Jet Hot or other Ceramic coatings pull down the footwell temp to notice?

Thanks

[scannon]

My Caterham was real foot cooker with the turbo and downpipe just in front of the driver's footwell.

 

I tried the stick on foam with aluminumized foil but the heat delaminated it and the foil went away leaving slightly melted black foam vulcanized to the footwell.

 

I made an aluminum heat shield that mounted about an inch ahead of the footwell. This deflected the flow of hot air and blocked the radiated heat from the turbo and down pipe.

 

The next step was spacecraft multi layer insulation (MLI) which I obtained as scraps from where I used to work. It has to be used inside the car as the direct heat from the turbo would melt it. I patched the scraps together and used spray adhesive to attach it to the back of the carpets. It is very light weight and thin. I did the floor, trans tunnel, behind the seats and the underside of the trans tunnel cover and I doubt it added more than 5 lb to the car. You cut it with a soldering iron with a blade tip and it seals the layers together at the cut.

 

It is not totally cool in the foot wells, but I spent the last week driving around SW Colorado in 90+ temps with sandals and shorts and although my feet were warm, they were not uncomfortable.

 

Before I installed the MLI I taped a couple of pieces of it to the bare aluminum on the side of the trans tunnel. The aluminum would get so hot you could not hold your hand on it but the MLI hardly felt warm.

 

 

I have enough scraps left to do one or two cars and will send you some if you want to try it.

 

[slomove]

Lots of info in some older threads like this one.

Recently I used the opportunity when I had engine and gearbox out to completely insulate the tunnel from the inside with 1/2" closed cell dense foam rubber (McMaster Carr # 93265K46, normally used for pipe insulation). I cut tightly fitting patches and stuck them on to the free areas between the chassis tubes with PL Caulk/Adhesive. Maybe not as good as the space stuff but very cheap.

 

First drive today and it helps quite a bit.

 

Gert

 

[DB6]

Gert, where did you get the Mc Carr stuff?

Did you do anything in the footwell or the engine bay?

Thanks

[slomove]

Gert, where did you get the Mc Carr stuff?

Did you do anything in the footwell or the engine bay?

Thanks

 

Well, from McMaster-Carr....

www.mcmaster.com

This is esay for me because only a few miles from work. They ship Internet orders all the time but it is pretty common stuff that you should find at a local industrial/HVAC distributor. You get it in slitted tubes to slip over pipes or like the stuff I got in sheets to wrap bigger equipment. Just make sure it is the better quality pliable material.

 

I used it to cover the inside aluminum surfaces of the tunnel (front to rear). For the FRP footwell caps I used 2" wide durable weatherstrip tape, just stuck on side by side. There may be better stuff for this purpose but it works for me.

 

For the firewall and the footwell "roof" I used the silvery bubble wrap material from the hardware store, just cut into suitable pieces and held in place with aluminum duct tape. This way I can quickly remove it when needed, e.g. scuttle off.

 

Like mentioned in the other post, the biggest difference was the side air intake that flushes a continuous stream of outside air through the footwell and does not allow for heat buildup. If you don't have any air flow down there, the insulation does not help much and the heat will just soak in over a little longer time.

 

That said, when summer strikes and outside temperatures go well above 100 degrees nothing really helps anymore....

 

Gert