It'll be nice in winter but not just now...

Hi folks,

A couple of weekends ago I fitted a full size intercooler and boost pin. All went well, power is up, bit more smoke than I'd like and I'm yet to see the fuel economy but so far so good.

This weekend I put in a couple of hundred miles (including dropping in on the LRO show and managing to avoid spending even more cash) and I've noticed that the passenger footwell is getting hot.

I don't have an EGT sensor so I was out with the laser thermometer this evening and made some measurements. Thermostat housing is around 90 degrees as is the rest of the block, exhaust manifold is around 170 max, intercooler return pipe is roughly 10 degrees cooler than inlet. The heat exchanger and by extension passenger footwell is around 40 degrees though - This is new which makes me think something hasn't gone as planned or broke downstream with the extra power/heat going through the engine.

Any views/observation/ kind words of support welcomed.

Thanks

Andy

gymmaniac said:

so I was out with the laser thermometer this evening and made some measurements.

Click to expand...

Only thing I can say, is the laser thermos can give misleadining results due to emissivity setting. On something that is the same temp but with a different colour, gloss, shiness, they can read different temps. I have tried them extensivley in tooling trials against touch type probes and they cannot be relied on. Plus you need to be careful of distance from the measurement point due to the cone effect on the area they measure. They are useful if being used as a reference and you have historical info gained with the same unit uaing the same distance / settings.


Cheers

Thanks for commenting Neilly,

True, but I'm not after super precise results and it's calibrated for a matt black surface which my nice dirty engine bay is a good approximation of.

I'm unfortunately confident that the readings are close to the mark.

gymmaniac said:

Thanks for commenting Neilly,

True, but I'm not after super precise results and it's calibrated for a matt black surface which my nice dirty engine bay is a good approximation of.

I'm unfortunately confident that the readings are close to the mark.

Click to expand...

Swap the pin back and see if you still have concerns. Did you make any other pump changes?

Cheers

No other changes apart from filing down the nylon washer to half thickness to lower the black smoke. Can't exactly un-file it unfortunately.

The manifold temps at idle or even revving it at a standstill mean diddly squat, under load is what you need to know.
Ebay K series thermocouple and a gauge, cheap far east ones will do for testing purposes

When I fitted a big intercooler on a td5 I measured the before and after temps which a thermocouple and was dissapointed to see they were exactly the same!

looks like I'll be going back to the standard pin then while I think about more instrumentation. is there a part number for the nylon washer?

old fuel pin put back in. I have increased the fueling though to compensate for the larger intercooler. Will just have to keep an eye on the temperature for now.