Black Intercoolers Mythbusted

today I'm mighty car mods will posing your into color black make your car go faster or will is make your car go slower today we find out somebody got mods [Music] [Music] welcome to another episode of mighty car mods proudly supported by US car insurance now today the age-old question since the birth of the wheel everyone's been wondering if I pay my intercal a black will my car be faster well it goes slower we've installed mini intercoolers over the years most of them big shiny things like this the role of the intercooler is to cool the hot air that's compressed by the turbo which means delivery of more oxygen to the engine for combustion but is it possible that the color of your intercooler can impact on how efficient it is the science suggests that this could be the case emissivity is the ability of an object to emit energy by radiation and black objects have unique emissive characteristics so today we're going to see if painting your intercal of black can make it perform better than leaving it shiny we have with us today an expert this is mouse works from the Mighty Car Mods phone we call him out what do we call him buddy we call him an electronical stick he's our electronical segment actually he's a mechatronics mechatronics engineer a mechatronics engineer so he knows about this stuff quick tip that everyone hang out with people smarter than you and world becomes a better place what is the plan for today Mouse works how are we going to test this what do we call this a theory a theory what do you call it in scientific conjecture and and you say just gonna see if it works a hypothesis sure this is backyard science people this is awesome and at the end of this video we'll know whether we should be painting I went to call those black or not is that right yeah all right can you run me through this setup that we have over here so we've got the hairdryer there which is from Mahdi's mx-5 of course yeah I think it comes in the tool kit that simulates the turbo which you know the hot air flowing through the intercooler and then we measure the temperature at the input and the output to see how much of a temperature drop we get across it first of all what we'll do is we'll put the hairdryer on and then get this whole thing up to a stable temperature and then as a control we'll be looking at the intake temperatures and then looking at the temperatures on the other side of the inter core and looking at that difference taking a note of that then painting the whole thing black and doing the same test and seeing whether that has made it better or worse in terms of its efficiency I've got a microcontroller here with I've got four thermistors set up and they're just temperature measurement devices and that's going to MATLAB on my laptop now before we kick this off can you give me some insight and what do you think is going to happen before we start do you think the black intercooler is going to run cool up there for more power faster car or do you think we're gonna get the opposite what do you think is gonna happen the science says that it should run cooler black but we're also have a trade-off that when we apply a layer of paint to here it might have an insulating effect so we have to see whether or not that's actually weather that negates the accuracy of the more emissive black color right I'm excited by science people and you're coming with us live mouse works myself Martin let's go take one for science the blow dryer goes on and we've got an intake temperature of a hundred and thirty-four degrees Celsius so we're gonna heat soak it because that probably closely most represents how it's going to be when it's under the bonnet and then we start seeing what the difference is and then we plant a quack so here you can see the temperature on the intake side of the inter core which is currently 136 degrees on the output side we can see that at 62 degrees so you can see that that's how much the intercooler is calling the air currently so we look at the middle that's currently a difference of around 65 degrees so once this is heat soaked then we can let the experiments begin we need to fully heat soak the inter core before we can get an accurate result which will be monitoring with some custom-made software on Mouse works laptop okay so the intercooler is heat soak now and we can see that because the lines on the graph are steady the temperatures are not changing anymore now the difference between the intake temperature and the outlet is sitting at a stable 38 degrees so that is the difference that is showing how efficient the intercooler is in cooling down the hot air now remember that is without air flow but that is going to be the number to beat once the intercooler is black we want to try and get a bigger difference than 38 degrees the next step now is to see the difference when we put air flow through it right and then we're going to paint a black right but what we first we need to do is figure out what difference the black paint alone makes without any flow yeah cuz it doesn't matter whether there's air flow or not painting it black is changing the in this image is an effective it's a measure of how much radiation we can either absorb or release yeah and that has nothing to do with air flow before we painted black we're running the experiment again this time with air flow courtesy of a car fans from a charged battery for constant voltage [Music] we're heat soaking me into color again and after checking the stats we've got a difference between intake and outlet temperatures of a hundred degrees okay so we've just finished our first clinical trial on humans to designate the efficacy of our hypothesis I have a cable tie okay good now these are the results that we've got with no fan running the difference of temperature we got was 38 degrees and with the fan running the difference we got was 100 degrees so the next step is to paint it black and see if those numbers drop but you've also worked out a mean result as well is that right yes so we've got four temperature probes on there one it'd be intercooler Inlet know that the outlet and we also have one in front of and behind to measure the temperature difference across it in that direction and by taking a mean a logarithmic mean of all four of those numbers we can get a value for the mean temperature difference which is a measure of the effectiveness of the cooler so and for that we got a forty eight point two degrees on this so we're looking for a smaller number we kind of black and it works better looking for a smaller number yes so hopefully we'll get something smaller than that yeah and if we don't then it means that the the black is potentially adding an extra layer of insulation there for defeating its efficacy we're using an etch primer to ensure we get proper adhesion of the black paint to the surface of the core which is aluminium now we're using matte black pink to spray the intercooler black [Music] we're using an innovative backyard technique to make sure we get as much paint as possible between the fins of the intercooler so the intercooler is now painted black which means we can run the experiments again and see if there is a change due to its emissivity we've waited for the paint to fully dry and now we're setting up to run the next experiment with the blow dryer plugged in now we're going to heat soak the intercooler again the temperatures continue to climb until it's fully heat soaked at which point we check the temperatures and the results are unbelievable we've just finished our first test with the intercooler painted black and I think we can agree the results are nothing short of staggering so when we did our first test when the intercooler was silver we have a difference between the intake and the outlet temperature of 38 degrees with it painted black we've now got a difference of 77 degrees that means the temperature coming out of the outlet here has dropped by 40 degrees which is just absolutely mind-blowing which is a massive difference I mean that's not necessarily meaning it's double this efficiency though no it's not twice as efficient because you've seen double the difference it doesn't work that way with a Celsius but I think you probably would feel that difference in the cars it's pretty significant now we're going to run the test again but this time with airflow to see what kind of results we get I think at the moment we're all finding it a little bit hard to believe there is such a difference blowing out reigns with airflow we've got a difference of 97 degrees which is a negligible improvement with all of the figures tallied up these are the final results with air flow the silver intercooler had a difference between the inlet and outlet temperatures of a hundred degrees and the black intercooler had a difference of 97 degrees without air flow the silver intercooler had a difference of 38 degrees and the black intercooler had a difference of 77 degrees this means the outlet temperatures of the black intercooler were almost 40 degrees colder than the exact same intercooler without the black paint I'm astonished pretty good result is there I'm just going to ask the question that I think everyone wants to know all aesthetics aside is there anything negative associated with having a black we've seen a better mean we've seen better output temperatures we've seen a bigger difference do you see any downside to doing it then emissivity works both ways so it'll absorb radiation easier when it's black just like it emits it better when it's black but unless you have your dinner cooler mounted in the sunlight so it's not set back under the bumper where you're not actually going to get into direct sunlight I don't think that that's the only bat downside that I could think up to doing that other than you know it not being silver and shiny anymore and I'm sorry but that's a big thing for me I know I know but that's why you're disappointed isn't it Marty because I see you a little bit sad because you want the shiny integral but you now realize that based on these findings in our very scientific lab black actually is deader and the black didn't make any difference with airflow we still got the same differential across it when there is air flowing which backs up the theory of being radiation only so the amount of the heat that's lost to radiation is probably insignificant compared to the amount of heat that's lost to convection and conduction to the air flowing through it but where you would see a benefit from that is when you're sitting at a stop light or in heavy traffic you're not gonna get that intercooler heat soaking from hot air blowing through it without any air flow across it or the drag stick or a drag strip that's where you'll see the benefit right well there are these my mind is officially blown Vincent thank you so much for coming down to our backyard lab today I'm shocked but I've got some inter-college some paint so I gotta go and I'll see you later muddy I'll be your mx-5 for you my thanks man can you take pull my head right back as well I'll just put it next to the curling irons and the scissors thanks man [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mighty Car Mods

Views: 1,588,192

Keywords: mighty, car, mods, moog, marty, turbo, jdm, how, to, diy, do, it, yourself, intercooler, black, emissivety, sr20, wrx, s13, s14, s15, liberty, rx7, subaru, nissan, dyno, power, kw, hp, boost, psi, blow off valve, turbo performance, turbo upgrade, Mazda RX-7 (Automobile Model), Horsepower (Unit Of Power)

Id: f1QL9veQaNg

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 16 2014