Wolf1

Hello all,... sorry if this has been covered already but I couldn't find it in a search.

Thermal coatings

Planning on coating header, crossover pipe etc......But heres my question: My local machine shop and tuner recommend thermal coating the piston crown and combustion chamber of cyl head as well as applying the teflon coating on the skirts.

Any ideas?

The logic behind it sounds convincing enough, less heat absorbed into the engine and more heat out of the exhaust port. Should help with spool-up as well as providing a cooler atmosphere for the incoming charge.

What do you think?.........

Travis - sflraver

someone on here just had that done. There were pics also but I forget who. I think I posted on the thread if that will help you in your search. less than a month ago I believe.

Wolf1

Thanks.....I did some more searching and found a little more info...not much though. heres a quote from one of the threads..

"The coatings that give you the most bang for the buck from a performanc and durabilty stand point would be pistons, cylinder heads and headers. From a durability stand point you could add the bearing shells and valve springs."


Anybody have any personal experience with coating the piston crown and combustion chamber?
Am curious as to what affect it has helping to prevent detonation and such.
And extracting more power from the same boost levels..

jp944

Depending on the application (race, street, etc.) intake manifolds, intercoolers and hard pipes are good candidates, too. If it is cost effective for you, that is.

Mike S

That'd probably be me that you guys are referring to. The motor isn't running yet...waiting for some ridiculously small parts. Here's my thread though.

https://rennlist.com/forums/showthre...hreadid=113263

Travis - sflraver

Mike is right. He was who I was refereing to.

You have to let everyone know when it is up and running.

Mike S

I could probably spin the motor fairly fast with an impact driver...would that count as running? LOL!

Tom M'Guinn

MIke, that motor looks a heck of a lot better than it did the day I stopped by while you were pulling it from the car. Did you do anything other than clean it to make it look like that? Did you coat the intake with something or polish it?

Perry 951

Mike... your motor is looking quite nice!

Mike S

Yeah....i was planning on a "Bay Area Engine Pull Update", which I'll probably still due since I don't want to steal this thread....but the motor is coming along well.

I would have to say though....I was completely inspired by Perry's engine pics. That motor was so clean that I found myself determined to get mine 1/2 as nice. I used lots....and man do I mean lots of elbow grease and soap and super clean....my neighbor actually came over and said "hey mike, if you let me borrow a wrench i'll promise not to tell the EPA that you're flushing 50 gallons of super clean down the sewer". It wasn't that much, but you can get an idea of how much time I spent on it.

anyways...a couple of teaser pics for ya.

BEFORE

AFTER

Geo

I've used coatings on a couple of engines of mine.

I built a very high output Nissan SR20DE engine and used a thermal barrier on the piston crowns and a moly coating on the skirts (you probably shouldn't do that on the 944/951). Coatings are relatively inexpensive and well worth it IMHO. They not only help to keep thermal transfer to the piston and head down, they also reduce hotspots by by spreading out the heat transfered to the coatings.

On my turbo G20 I had the exhaust manifold, turbine housing, and j-pipe (exhaust dump) coated with Swain's White Lightning coating. That stuff is awesome. After installing the turbo engine, the under-hood temps were lower with the turbo (with the coatings) than they were when the car was NA with conventional ceramic coatings. No kidding. BTW, you might consider having the turbine housing extrude honed. That improves the efficiency of the turbine section.

Call the good folks at Swain Tech. http://www.swaintech.com

They really are good folks and Dan Swain is a racer from way back. Their turn-around time is pretty good and from what I understand, better than most in the industry.

Wolf1

Thanks guys, looks like I will be coating pretty much what ever doesn't wiggle.

My local machine shop does a lot of these coatings for race applications as well as VERY high performance snowmobile engines, the owner also knows the people at HPC.

HPC has a pretty informative site here's the link.....Thanks...RAY

HPC coatings

David Ray

"Thermal" coat everying in the engine bay you'll be glad you spent the mula and beat'n the jadiese out of all those riceies! Go for it!! Dude!

Wolf1

Heres an interesting thought that was brought up on another board; Has anyone ever monitored the air temp just under the intake runners compared to the actual intake runner temp? This would tell you if the intake was picking up or shedding heat at city and highway speeds.

My engine is out or I would check this little detail. Anybody got a multimeter with a temp probe that wants to check this?

Should be able to put the temp probe beneath the intake, not touching anything for an air temp.
Then tape it to the bottom of the runners for an actual intake temp.

If the air is warmer then thermal coating the intake would be good, if the air is actually cooler then coating would be bad.....