Does the color of an intercooler make any difference in how good it works? I know companys like ETS and Nisei offer black anodizing for a price, but is this just a cosmetic thing or does it really make a significant difference. Does a Black colored intercooler work better than a natural aluminum one? I looked for the facts on this and they're hard to find. Does someone have some info about this...

 

im pretty sure its just cosmetic. if anything i would think painting it yourself wouldnt help cause you'd be making the fins thicker which would hurt the air flow.

 

color means nothing

 

Anodizing is fine for an intercooler, its just for look.

Painting an intercooler is bad for it as it, as mentioned, inhibits the intercoolers ability to do its job properly.

 

yeah most heat sinks on anything are anodized so they look fancy.

 

Anodizing will change the appearance, not the performance. Painting is a whole different can of worms though!

Thanks,

Michael

 

just for looks , it depends on what you like.

 

I've painted several intercoolers using spray paint, changed from black to silver, logged the temps before and after with a thermocouple, and it hasn't made an atom of difference.

See this type of post with these type of answers all the time on forums, if you don't log the before and after temps, there's no point answering.

 

I gather that the effect of darker colors, like black, on a heat exchanger is important only for radiated energy like light? Does that mean the efficiency is unaffected by the color if we're just talking about the air flowing over and through it? I thought that the color also had an effect on the ability to exchange heat with a medium like air?

 

There was a theory that black was the best colour....from what I can see you could paint it pink and it wouldn't make any difference. Sprayed mine with spray cans, as stated previously, logged temps before and after, not the slightest difference.

If you've logged the temps before and after spraying an intercooler, and find your results to be different, post 'em up.

 

Paint on a bar and plate intercooler isn't going to make too much of a difference. Anodizing is an etching/staining method, so it becomes part of the intercooler. When rocks hit painted areas they chip, when anodizing is hit with rocks it holds up much better.

 

If you want black you can always get a heat dispersant coating, they are almost always black.

 

Color doesn't make much difference at all. The darker the color you use the more light energy gets transformed into heat. This transformation on even the brightest day is very small in comparison to the heat generated by your turbo but nevertheless it's a bad idea to color the "cold side" of a heat transfer object black when in the presence of light. Heat energy transfers quickest when the deltaT (temp difference across the cross section of the object... which in this case would be the temp of the outside of the tube vs the temp of the inside of the tube in the IC) is the greatest. If you apply black ANYTHING to the exterior of an intercooler you will allow more light than before to convert into heat on the exterior surface of the intercooler. This lowers the dT and therefore lowers the effectiveness of the heat exchanger. Again, this effect is relatively small but it could be calculated I suppose.

As for coatings, as has been said that's a different story. Don't use a coating on a heat exchanger unless it's specially formulated to be a heat transfer film. Unless the coating has a higher density than the metal you're spraying it on, it's considered an insulator. You wouldn't put an insulator on a heat exchanger fin, now would you? Typical paint will inhibit the heat transfer process. Anodizing doesn't coat the metal the way painting does, so it's a better option if you want to color your IC.... however...

The BIGGEST issue with ICs is SURFACE FINISH. You typically don't want a polished or annodized heat exchanger because airflow over that surface is too laminar and therfore there is poor heat transfer. I'm not going to unpack that idea right now but just trust me, if you want something to dissipate heat, the surface should have some roughness to it. Of course there are boundaries to that statement but if we're talking within reason then picture a cast part. Go look at your factory exhaust manifold. Look at the finish on the outside of it. A surface finish similar to that or maybe slightly more smooth would be ideal for bars and tanks on an IC. So... that being said - both annodizing and painting have a way of smoothing out the surface finish of a part. Both of these are bad for cooling.

Optimal cooling would come from a highly reflective (either metallic, think chrome-like, or white) color with a non-polished finish. Obviously this doesn't fit with most car's themes so the point is moot. If we were all out looking for functionality this is how we would go... but we're not. We need to balance with form. I'll say this, I've painted my end tanks black because the IC I bought was polished steel. Polished steel is too flashy for my racecar and the end tanks don't do any appreciable cooling anyways so this was a reasonable sacrifice. However, I did not paint the bars or fins of the intercooler at all. I would highly discourage anyone from painting or annodizing the heat transfer surfaces of the intercooler for any reason unless you somehow came across a white heat transfer coating (which would have to contain some interesting ingredients such as soluble metals).

This is all I would consider: http://www.swaintech.com/store.asp?pid=10968

 

Like already said in previous posts, color means nothing.
Will painting your intercooler black affect performance? No. The thickness is so minimal that you will see no effects. Now if you add 10 layers of paint, that's another story.

If you are wanting a more stealthy look, all I would recommend is either anodizing or a heat dissipation coating which is used on intercoolers/piping. Dissipation coatings will give your intercooler better efficiency as I found out doing some testing.

 

I spray painted my stock FMIC black so it was subdued. I didn't notice any difference just like heaveho stated.