Footwell Heat Issues

[coffee break]

Are you at all concerned that the elevated temperatures your exhaust manifold sees is going to have long term issues with stresses on your engine?

 

What kind of stresses should I be concerned about?

[seschm1234]

Hi Coffee

 

By applying the insulator to the exhaust manifold it creates a new and different temperature distribution from the head down through the manifold. The maximum temperature seen in the head must now increase to drive the same amount of heat out of the engine. So I would be concerned that the heat that was previously coming off the exhaust manifold forces a increase in head temperature and therefore increased stress in both the head and the manifold.

[coffee break]

I guess each situation/application has its' own particular conditions. I have an unmodified* xflow and it is used for street driving. In my use of the car, I'm not flogging it 100% of the time. For those who track any type of car, they will be incurring greater stresses and increase their need for service and rebuilding.

I have recently installed wrap and have observed two things so far. Less heat radiating on the driver and a single "backfire" after shutdown. After I turn the motor off, there is a single low energy "pop". It takes 3 seconds to occur. Kinda funny. :jester:

 

*(unmodified except for the header wrap)

[Kitcat]

I used this wrap on my X-Flow headers and out the exhaust pipe to the exhaust can without any apparent ill-effects to the engine. I put 12K miles on it after the wrap. I did a lot of track days and often mid-summer when weather was scorching.

[seschm1234]

Found this as a example of a factor car using the wraps. The new 620 R for sale in the US does use wrap on the exhaust manifold as you can see from these photos :

 

http://hillbankusa.com/car/sale-2014-caterham-seven-620r-convertible

 

but the Simon C. 260 CSR does not appear to of used these wraps. I don't know if its the different builders preferences or something specified by Caterham for the 620R.

[Davemk1]

I owned a Birkin with a Zetec years ago and the footwell was silly hot. I wrapped the headers, insulated the outside of the footbox, put in some sheet metal heat shields and finally put an opening in the forward lower section of the box to push air into the box. It worked pretty well and lowered the temps a lot.

 

dave