Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2004 5:46 am
anyone from alabama?
I think I said I was going to look at some of my heat transfer books for an answer....I looked at them a little last night.
Bottom line, you have three types of heat transfer, conduction, convection, & radiation.
For heat exchangers, or intercoolers in this case, convection is going to be your primary means of removing heat from the exchanger. You have air blowing through the fins and removing heat.
You will however have conduction heat transfer from the engine and the parts connected to the intercooler. This will put heat back into the intercooler.
Lastly you will have radiant heat transfer from the engine, which also puts heat back into the intercooler.
If you look solely at the how heat is being removed from the intercooler, by convection, and what the surface of the fins are.....what is smoother...paint or bare metal......paint. Smooth surfaces do no promote as much turbulance and heat transfer will be reduced. Ding number one for paint.
Secondly, if we look at the internal workings of the intercooler as a system, you have to transfer heat (conductive heat transfer) from inside through the core, and into the fins, which eventually gets cooled by air. If you have paint on there, that is one more level the heat must travel through.....and reduces the efficiency. Ding number two for paint.
Lastly, you can argue that black paint will absorb more heat.....honestly I think in this situation....it really doesn't make a hill of beans what color it would be, since the radiant heat transfer is not really in the visible or ultra violet light spectrum.
So we have two definite dings for painting your intercooler. However we never really calculated how much less efficient it will become by doing so. It may be a lot, or it may be so little, it won't matter. However to do so would require more effort and knowledge then I have or am willing to learn
I personally wouldn't paint it....but that's me....like i said....the reduced efficiency by painting may be so small it probably wouldn't matter.....so I'd say just do whatever you want and say screw you to the rest of us
