Fiberglass restraining metal from expanding is laughable. Even if you wrapped it with continuous fibers around the pipe so they couldn't shift, the pipe expansion would simply break the fibers if they tried to restrain expansion. Glass fibers are very brittle and they aren't continuous anyway, not to mention aligned perpendicularly to the tube. They will simply shift around and they will have zero effect on the metal tube.

It does hold moisture against the pipe though, which is why I say ceramic coat it to protect the base metal. It's also ugly.

I have used it on an uncoated stainless pipe manifold on a daily driver for 3 years though. Other then the fiberglass slowly deteriorating, it worked like a champ. That manifold was crack free for like 50k miles before the turbo kit got sold and somebody else used it for who knows how long. The only issue I would say, that manifold was dark brown/gray/red in color after 3 years. The fiberglass definitely holds the heat in and thus makes the base metal temp a lot higher.

As far as inconel goes, I might as well post it just for fun at this point.



You are right, inconel is stupid expensive. I go more for the 321 stainless. This is 0.035" wall 3" tube with a few miles on it. I have a feeling it would have simply fell apart if it was mild steel. I love how light it is though. That's also kind of the point you are missing. Sure, you can use schedule 40 mild steel and it will last. It will also produce a manifold that weighs 30 pounds. Go to schedule 10 stainless and it will hold up just as well but weigh 20 pounds. Go to 321 stainless and 0.065" wall and now it's down to 10 pounds. Go to Inconel 625 and 0.035" wall and now it's 5 pounds. Once you consider the price you pay for 1 pound of weight off the car when you get to the light weight end of the scale, the added price of Inconel isn't that insane any more. 25 pounds that is fairly high in the vehicle and infront of the front tires matters to some.

 

Alot of good info here guys. I used heat shield products heat shield armor before on my 944 turbo its a ceramic mat with aluminum(or other metal bonded to the one side). That stuff is awesome it really cuts the heat down in the engine bay and keeps heat in the pipes. This is it below it can handle 1800F continuous or get the thicker mat for more. The only issue is its like handling fiberglass insulation so make sure you have gloves on and safety glasses,

 

I recently purchased a "lava rock" turbine housing blanket and was completely shocked at how well it dropped temps under the hood. The compressor housing used to get super hot(burn yo ***) just from radiant heat off the turbine housing. It NEVER gets anything over barely warm now.

 

From my understanding & researching Heat wraps for headers etc hold in moisture, which can lead to premature rusting of your headers & other parts.

 

I apologise if i'm thread jacking, I don't mean to, but with the location of the turbo manifold in conjunction with the location of the open vent on our Evo hoods, what would keep someone from having heat sink "fins" welded to their manifold? Like a processor in a computer. Too much heat to disipate?

 

I think you guys are overthinking this WAYYYYY too much. I don't have a degree in anything related but sometimes common sense beats book smarts any day.. If you own a business your goal is to make a great product that will last and try to keep production cost to a minimum to maximize profit. Which also means cutting out the middle men.

Think about for just one second.. Most companies mass produce manifolds.. It is easier for them to just buy stainless steel, weld it up and never have to worry about rusting. And if it does, then the only thing that they have to do is fix/replace it. The cost to buy the mild steel, buy the tools to "coat" the mild steel, the price of the "coating" itself or pay a company like swaintech to coat the manifolds inside/ out will add up. AND it would take more time to produce these manifold..

Another thing you have to account for is liability. Let's say a vendor decides to start "coating" their parts and something happens to the manifold or somehow the coating comes off and damages a turbo or engine, its going to be a big liability situation on whose fault is it why whatever happened happened.. The coater is going to blame the fabricator and the fabricator is going to blame the coater.

For you guys that can weld your own stuff and have access to friends that can coat things for you, great.. But for an average joe like me, its easier to just buy a stainless steel manifold and never look back..

 

only way compressor cover gets just warm to touch is if you are not boosting. compressor outlet temps are typically in the 300 degree range depending on turbo you are using. some better before and after data would be nice. can you perform some before and after test with a temp gun?

 

Correct...I was talking about radiant heat from just driving around for a period of time. Not after a full boost pull. Before the blanket, you could not hold your hand on the comp. cover for more than a sec. without risk of injury after a leisurely trip to the store. Now it stays only slightly warm and you can put your hand on it fo' eva' and it's never even gets uncomfortable.
As far as testing goes, it's not a fun job getting it on an off the turbine housing, as it exists in a very tight location. I am satisfied with it's performance, so for me, there is no reason to prove it's doing what I already know it's doing...you dig?

 

Heat drives the turbine so you never want to lose heat from inside the header. Welding on "sinks" would cause just that.

 

Boom. End of argument right there. Then add a turbo onto the end of that header and you've got too much weight hanging off the those studs, imo.

 

So you're indirectly saying that if I put my turbo in my oven and heat it up, my turbine will start to spin because "heat drives the turbine"? Exhaust gasses drive the turbine, not heat. I can hook my shop vac on blow mode to my turbo and show you heat doesn't "drive the turbine".

 

Heat is part of the equation. You do have to move the fluid to spin the wheels, but heat is a signifigant amount of the energy used to spin a turbine wheel. As the gas expands across the turbine wheel, it cools off. The difference in temeprature is a difference in energy and that energy went into driving the turbine wheel.

 

I'll elaborate for you since you are struggling with the concept. The more exhaust heat you can contain in the manifold/header, the more exhaust energy you'll have available to drive the turbo. So....heat drives the turbo

 

A lot of people have some interesting ideas that are costumers. So people don't mind paying twice the amount of a manifold for less "trouble".

I can make an inconel manifold that weighs a third of the ss manifolds and makes power gains people would have no issues paying that?

 

Other than racing teams or people that are building top notch race cars, inconel and other "superior metal" manifolds don't really appeal to the majority of the guys that daily drive or rarely race. Im not gonna say that you wouldn't sell those kinds of manifolds, but you'd make more money and have more customers that would rather a traditional cheaper ss manifold..