So I read some write-up about a BMW build and the guy wrapped his intercooler pipes with header wrap. Not sure if it was just for looks or what?

Is there any benefit to wrapping IC (or SRI or CAI) pipes in header wrap? Would it shield from ambient heat from the engine bay?

 

no it will only keep the heat in and will look like **** haha. Bad idea!

 

You might try some heat reflectant tape or wrap on the hot side IC pipes for the portion of pipe that gets heated by the exhaust manifold area. Wrapping the rest of the hot side would reduce underhood temps at the expense of maybe holding in some temperature that would have otherwise escaped to the engine bay. Wrapping the cold side IC pipes should always be a benefit since you want to keep it as cool as possible before it enters the intake side of the engine.

Likely it's not going to make a huge difference either way but I used some DEI Cool Tape following that guidline and it doesn't seem to be hurting me. Using a heat spacer intake manifold gasket and doing a TB coolant bypass also seems to keep the intake manifold nice and cool as I've recently found out. I think I found more cheap power!

 

you want something along the lines of this

http://www.designengineering.com/pro...sp?m=sp&pid=30
http://www.designengineering.com/pro...sp?m=sp&pid=75

Exhaust wrap is ment to keep heat IN. not OUT.

 

well its an insulator... so keeping heat in vs out is the same thing really..

i guess the question is:

do you think the engine bay temp is heating up the IC pipes MORE than that hot air inside them?

if so then wrap them...

but i doubt it... and performance gains are probably going to be offset by the extra weight of the wrap :P hehe

 

well its an insulator... so keeping heat in vs out is the same thing really..

i guess the question is:

do you think the engine bay temp is heating up the IC pipes MORE than that hot air inside them?

if so then wrap them...

but i doubt it... and performance gains are probably going to be offset by the extra weight of the wrap :P hehe

 

You don't need to wrap it. If you wrap the hot side, you're just keeping heat in and making your intercooler do more work. But, the difference is very little since it's such a short run and the air if flowing by so fast. The cold side won't make a difference because there's nothing around that area that would heat up your pipes enough for the wrap to make a difference.

 

Regardless. reflective wrap > header wrap. in keeping heat AWAY.

Exhaust wrap is nice stuff. i have it on my subaru's exhaust.. but by no means will it reflect heat away from the charge pipes, which is what you want.

 

A lot of coating companies will put heat dispersant on intercoolers and intercooler pipes. Dunno how well it works though but ya, the idea is to draw heat out of the charge pipes. You'd use a thermal coating or exhaust wrap keep heat in the exhaust bits.