Heat wrapping the manifold

[letitsnow]

I'm having some issues that I think are being caused by heat from the turbo/manifold, poor hot starts, melting wiring, possibly hot fuel. Has anybody wrapped the manifold? Any problems with cracking, warping, etc? I think I'm also going to wrap the intake runners and put a sleeve over the fuel rail.

 

Swaintech is local, but 2-3x more expensive.

[BluDestiny]

I'm wrapping my manifold because I don't want to spend an extra $100 or so shipping my manifold to them and back. For $300 I think coating would be the way to go.

 

Plus I had a bad experience wrapping with cheap autozone crap. I was a noob and wore a Tshirt and got fibers all up my arms. Itched for days. Wear something with long sleeves.

 

For the fuel rail you could use that foil stuff, same for your wiring loom if its melting.

[Tony D]

I found that the thermal blanket offered by Cool-Tec worked FAR better at keeping heat off adjacent components than the wrapping EVER did. The package sold by MSA was enough for more than the tubular header I was using, the excess would easily cover a second set, or the intake, fuel rails, whatever...

 

I had a wrapped turbo manifold and it just plain got hot, and was a PITA with all the fibers on it with the accompanying downside as mentioned above (plus it holds water so water coming in through hood vents over the manifold, onto the wrapping as it sat parked....soaked in got wet, mildly warm...flaky flaky flaky rusty mess when it was taken off.

 

I also wrapped a set of tubular headers. Similar results.

 

On my last go, I decided to try the blanket instead, and worked HARD to get it right up to the header/manifold flange which I could do, and still access the nuts for retorque.

 

It was amazing how well the foil blanket reflected heat AWAY from everything else in the engine bay. It was noticeably cooler. I would say my header with the blanket put no more heat into the engine bay than the stock cast iron manifold with it's original heat shielding (and that says A LOT!)

 

the blanket can be touched when running, something I did not want to do with the wrap. With the foil backing, it seems to hold up better cosmetically than the wrap as well. It's been on my daily driver now for two or three years and still looks great.

 

 

ALL THIS BEING SAID: I'd have the manifold coated, THEN put a blanket on it to top it all off. The cost of the blanket is deminimis. Coating has advantages over simple heat transfer. The combination of the two is unbeatable. I would not make the decision between the two, it would be whether I added the blanket to a coated component or not.

[letitsnow]

Anybody ever use any techline coatings, DIY style? I can sandblast and bake it.

 

Swain says 150-235 for cast iron manifolds, not terrible.

Edited April 3, 2012 by letitsnow

[Tony D]

For the price and hassle, why not? Actually coating it will help with the heat and corrosion if you wrap or blanket later.

[BluDestiny]

Tony do you have a picture of your manifold?

[Datsun Deron]

Well I wrapped my manifold last night and so far so good. I actually wrapped the manifold in the car with some old 2 inch header wrap that my father had kicking around. Unfortunately I don't know the length but I used the entire roll. It was a bit of a pain to get installed and took about 2 hours. It would have been a breeze had the manifold not been in the car...The header wrap roll was already cut into two very long pieces so that helped make it a little easier to fish in there. I would just wrap the pipe and fish the rest of the wrap out the other side then repeat until completely done. I was able to wrap cylinders 1 and 2 in one piece, 3,4 and 5 in one piece and 6 in one piece.

 

I wore gloves, long sleeves, a dust mask and eye protection. Even with the long sleeves I still managed to get some of the fibers on my arm. I took a shower and tried to wash my arms best I could but it was still itchy going to bed. My advice would be to wear long sleeves and tape your sleeves to the gloves.

 

I also had some scrap 1 inch wrap sitting around and I used that for the downpipe.

 

As for the turbo blanket I purchased that off ebay from a seller called "speedmotoring" for $43.95. It was incredibly easy to install. I had to add a little slit for the wastegate arm but that was all. Its held on with two metal springs.

 

For the metal zip ties those were also purchased off ebay from a seller called "l88_tools" it was 9.99 for 12 ties and I purchased two packs just incase. I didn't want to pay the local price which was over triple the cost. I ended up using 4 ties for the down pipe and around 10 for the manifold. For cylinders 3 and 4 I had to connect two of them together to make it fit.

 

After the install the underhood temps are MUCH cooler, I also found that the turbo spools up sooner and faster. I wish I had done some datalogging of the before and after but unfortunately don't have much for before datalogging since I've switched computers.

 

Here are some pictures:

[Twerkinggodzilla]

What throttle body are you using?