krystar

now u got me starting to think about making a cooling product....hmmm business ideas

fatbillybob

fwiw mcmaster carr has the exact fittings on the fast cool shirt. I made my own system with a foamed in cooler box ans bilge pump. Works awesome but water is heavy. anyway to decrease volume=less weight

kurt M

No surprise on the TC results. They are still not ready for reasonable priced prime time. A loop chiller (compressor based) system uses less energy. You ether dump power into the alt or a compressor. Make a very small compressor based system that chills water in a slightly flexible tank. The flex tank lets you fill the system 100% so there is no air. Propel the chiller water via an inline pump. The entire thing could be made very small and self contained with the hoses and control wires the only external parts. Drive it off the crank pulley via an electric clutch and have the evap and chiller side in the same box like a home window type unit. One spinning shaft that drives the compressor and the small condenser fan. Duct some air to the condenser with a 2 inch hose.
Do NOT make it all electric. Converting rotation into elec and then elec into rotation is the long way around and only eats up more HP. I bet you could make a compressor based cool shirt that could move 500 watts of heat with a lot less than 1 HP from off the shelf stuff. This is a lot less than TC, never stops cooling and no slosh. Keep in mind that the standard automotive AC is far larger cap than is needed to drive a cool shirt.

Have a T stat in the shirt so you can set the comfort level and put your mind on droving. Keep the circ solution moving all the time but shunt it back to the tank when the T stat is open via a simple 3 way pop valve. This keeps the fluid moving in the tank and you can run well below 32 deg to store more cooling cap. The T stat will not stay open long between cycles. Long off cycles; let the circ pump cycle down via a cheap solid state timer aftehr the comp is off for a set time. You can also rig it so the electric clutch always /only closes under braking and run zero power loss. Flip the Red mist switch and run in zero power loss mode if/ until you lose stored cooling. You could do this with a TC based unit as well. Use an alt / TC combo as an energy dump and turn excess entry speed into cooling. Might make for a little bit less heat in the brakes too.

Cory M

if you need it to last longer find some tupperware containers that are the right size and freeze your own ice blocks, last a lot longer than cubes..

Bryan Watts

Oh yeah, already know about that trick...for that matter, you can just buy the appropriately sized container for making ice blocks from Coolshirt. The problem becomes freezing, transporting, storing, etc while at the track over a 100+ degree weekend. And it still doesn't last the 2.5-3 hours needed for a Conti Challenge race. The teams using ice based systems all seem to have made up their own, much larger, coolers.

kurt M

Mount award weight and ballast plates inside a cooler and pre-chill them overnight. Use them as your heat sink. Steel or lead can hold a lot of heat per pound.

Slug in chunks of dry ice along with the regular ice.

Heat driven absorption systems are getting better. Still a bit heavy per BTU moved. if weight is not a driving force (that is you need to ballast anyway) you could use tail pipe heat to cool the driver. The older systems used toxic ammonia but there are methanol based systems too. RV fridges have been using this type of system for many years. Slow to get up to speed but will chug along moving heat once the system is up to temp.

Chads996

FYI - 1 gallon of water weighs 8.36 lbs. Reducing that weight (plus ice) was key in my search.

C.

fatbillybob

True but if you drive it off a pully attached to existing fan belt system you gotta another failure point which could end your race. If you go all electric or "dedicated" drive off the crank then a failed belt will only mean you get "hot" but you can still race. sometimes its not easy to add another fan belt

kurt M

Edit to read "just place where AC comp would have been in street version of the car." I think driving a 1/4 size compressor can be figured out.

BTW I did not mean to hyjack Chad's thread. Got all geeked up with a complex problem.

kristap

Yeah, it's a zombie question: Anything ever come of this, Chad?

Chads996

Yeah....still have the parts for the prototype. Proly should actually build the damn thing...

C.

69gaugeman

It has been three years...

I will be looking in the next couple of years for a cooling product.

Gary R.

Fill Zip lock baggies with ice, duct tape them to your core, go.

ir_fuel

Stupid question, but if you run a 996 or 997 cup car and weight is not an issue wouldn't it be easier just to install the A/C unit of a GT3 street car on the engine and have it blow cold air in the cabin? Or will it cost too many hp?

Matt Romanowski

Or just get a racing grade AC http://www.kustomkomponents.com/prod...ntercooler.php