Most of the rad that are painted are made of Cu. Performance rad are usually mad ou Al. The point is, I don't think a mesh would affect the amount of air getting to the intercooler. The car will be moving ramming air into the intercooler. Some of the earlier Rx7 came with a black painted intercoler from the factory, so did the old galant and tredia turbo.

 

Nice find, quite interesting! They were testing Woven Stainless Steel Mesh with the largest diameter of 0.411mm (0.0162") at 70cfm. I got say ~1.5mm (0.06"). I wonder at what size the flow starts to level off... That part is missing...

Actually... I just looked at the results again, and it appears that the last 3 sizes have about the same results. It is only when they get into the really small meshes that there is a change...

So, would one conclude that if you have anything bigger it will not really matter, well, at 70cfm anyway? Am I intrepreting the results correctly?

 

I was there at xtnct's as "technical assistant" today. Which means he painted and I drank beer. I felt the mesh would make a significant reduction in airflow, but without measurements and calculations my arguement was intuitive only.

BTW for those who like the agressive look of the intercooler...... I tried to stop him.

Speedlimit...

 

Sorry, I don't like it. And I think the mesh will decrease airflow. Black also tends to absorb more heat in sunlight, etc.

 

Sorry, but I love the looks of the FMIC not seeing one at all

 

Oh the poor thing . FMIC's are beautiful; I just don't understand it. Darker colors are heat absorbers and lighter colors are heat reflecters when dealing with sunlight. The black will definitely not transfer heat as efficiently. Also, ANY coating of paint will act as an insulation, no matter how slight. Each of those tiny little aluminum fins are now wearing a nice little black winter coat for the love of god when really all they wanted was to be naked on a cold, cold day .

 

I took a look at the technical paper and the free hole area appears to be the limiting variable relative to flow. And it doesn't seem to make a big difference whether the area is reduced by a larger diameter mesh or a higher mesh density. Either way there will be "choke flow" point and flow will decrease and pressure drop will increase accross the mesh.

Since the only thing we car about is intercooler heat transfer, a good baseline run with the road-dyno would have been nice as a comparison before and after the mesh.

Speedlimit..

 

actually, black is usually the coolest color for anything to be out of direct sunlight or heat radiation source. it radiates the most heat away. the problem is that now it will absorb more radiated heat from the engine (though the radiator would probably catch most of that). in addition, you just ruined the transfer coeffecient, as paint will not transfer heat as fast as bare metal... to prove this go open your freezer and touch a plastic or coated part, and touch a bare metal part. I bet the metal one feels colder.. actually everything is the same temp, just the metal transfers heat away from your hand faster. now how much an effect this will have on the real world is unknown, and probably barely noticable, but in theory you're hurting the cooling ablility of the IC... but on the other hand, it does look nice, and i'm considering putting a smaller screen just toblock insects ad rocks that are completely killing my IC.

 

nah... looked better before...

 

What a dumbass . . . painting the intercooler black.
Black absorbs heat like crazy.
Wear a black jacket out on a sunny hot day
Then wear a white or silver jacket.
I guarantee you wearing the black jacket will make you feel much hotter. Your Intercooler needs to be cool not hot.

Also as the others said, painting the intercooler reduces the heat transfer efficiency due to the paint.

 

I think it looks good. I agree with not wanting to advertise also.

What type of paint did you use or did you anodize?

I disagree with the guys that are stating that it reduces efficiency. I doubt that radiators would be this color if it dramatically affected cooling. Cobb tuning/APS sells a black intercooler as do some other manufacturers

 

From Dee - R33 GTR IC: Black from the factory.

 

I believe that Swain Tech has a special black coating called Black Body Emitter especially for IC's. It's supposed to improve thermal conductivity over bare aluminum.

 

The fact is...
The paint will insulate and block air flow.
Bad idea.

Strip it and get it black anodized if it is that important to you.

A hot dog wrapper on a radiator can make a race car overheat!
Don't under estimate the importance of air flow.

It is funny how some guys hand tweezer the bugs out every week and other guys will paint them black

 

It will insulate? Clarify your point please - I'm not sure I understand where you are going w/ that.

It won't block airflow as long as he sprayed from an acute angle on the horizontal plane. This will stop paint coating the inner part of the IC fins. I did it this way on my Integra intercooler on some advice from the honda forums back in the day.