spencang

When I have seen various custom car's engine bays, I have noticed that a lot of intake parts and other various parts that don't like heat are covered with the gold insulation. I'm wondering if anyone has put the gold insulation on our intakes? And if so, was/is it worth it?

Chris White

The only area of the intake that is worth insulating is between the bottom of the intake and the hot side of the turbo. Better to add an insulated heat shield there.

Voith

Gold is high efficiency heat reflector. But if you want it to really do its trick it has to be relatively thick and gold tends to be expensive. There is show grade gold foil and then there is the real deal gold foil. Mclaren f1 has gold foil for hood protection made from 16 grams of pure gold which is about $1k just for gold.

spencang

Thanks for the information

Jay Wellwood

There are three types of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation.

Radiative heat transfer is measured in terms of emissivity. For best resistance to absorbing radiative heat, polished gold is the best, polished silver is the next best while matte black is the best if you want to conduct heat - matter charcoal gray is the next best.