fatbillybob

Don't do that. Dry ice is CO2 and you can not breath it. It will either kill you or make you pass out from lack of oxygen.

coolzu

I have a solution to the helmet air situation. I have invented a helmet a/c system that will work off of any existing “Cool Shirt”, “F.A.S.T”., or any other system bought or homemade. I do make a complete kit, cooler, shirt, mount, hoses, including the helmet a/c system. Air that enters helmet is approximately 25-30 degrees below the ambient air outside the car. I have Late Model Stock and Pro Cup series cars along with some BMWCCA and SCCA running them now. PM me for more information.

924RACR

Hey, a timely update... we stumbled across the 800gph pump in my local O'Reilly's! So I nabbed it and put it in the 12-qt cooler for my wife to try out.

Definite improvement. We did also identify that, in order to get proper cooling of the water, it is in fact necessary to have at least 50% cube ice, not just block ice, in the cooler; without cube ice, the surface area just isn't enough to transfer heat. However, with the cube ice and 800gph pump, she now gets out of the car and the small of her back is cold!!! Wow. What an improvement!

It is actually too strong to leave on on the grid, even for her - but once she gets moving, it's on full-time (don't have a temp control).

Thanks for the suggestion...

KaiB

Edit: never mind my bloviation, I didn't read the above correctly and feel badly about this...

umm, relative surface area decreases with the size of the block.

Volume is a function of the cube; surface, the square.

There must be another reason.

Gary R.

Can't PM you but did email you...

Juan Lopez

couldn't pm either

924RACR

For a given mass (and, in fact, volume) of ice - the cubes will have more total surface area exposed to water flow than one large single block. Kinda like using a proper radiator as a heat exchanger vs. a simple enclosed tank of water.

Seems pretty straightforward to me...

(you a mathematician, by any chance? )

Gary R.

The smaller the particle, the more surface area for any given volume. If you could make 2" square ice cubes that may be an ideal size as it would take some time to melt yet yield a lot of area for cooling. I've had ice (cubes) last 4 hours through a couple practices and I have a hoody coolshirt.

KaiB

Farmer, *** chemist/mathmetician...no ChemE

but I don't seem to read well....

J richard

I know there was reference to it but has anyone actually tried plumbing the seat? Mclaren, ford and Mercedes have used cool air through the seat to good effect. Running under the fabric you could get a bunch if tubing in the seat with a lot of area and not have to worry about it being constraining or having to disconnect everything with driver change. The suit would insulate it somewhat, but when I get out after a hot session it's the parts in the seat that are the sweatiest...

paradisenb

I can't imagine a lot of cooling passing through 3 layers of Nomex plus layer one of seat fabric. I think we would get far, far more core temp cooling with a sports cup style flap on the cool shirt (cooling in the groin) than through the seat cooling.

As for head cooling, if the air temp could be reduced 15 degrees C from ambient, that would be huge. I have heard the cool shirt system with the helmet blower that passes air through the cold water only reduces temps by 2C. Users claim a significant improvement in comfort and it dries the sweat.

dp35

I put cooling vanes through my seat insert, under the nomex cover. Even without any forced air running through it, it really helped ventilate the sweaty back & butt area. Next I'm going to hook it up to the stock fan, which I kept in my race car for this purpose.

I don't see it as this idea INSTEAD OF a cool shirt (which I also use) or anything else. IMO driver cooling is like money, horsepower, or traction, there can never be enough.

coolzu

My apologies to all that looked at my previous post on the stats of my Helmet A/C system, I need to make a few clarifications and corrections. The normal or on average ambient temperature difference between the air outside the car and what is delivered to the helmet is 15 to 20 degrees F below ambient. Other types of helmet air systems claim as much as 30 degrees (with a $5,000.00 plus price tag) and they don’t state above what temp they are referring to. I did not want my claims to be so vague. We have ran tests on different types of race cars and tracks and under the best conditions have seen ambient temperature differences of up to 25 to 30 degrees F. The other considerations that have to be made are where the device is located in the car, the temperature of the water in the cooler (ie: new, fresh), type and size of cooler, type of ice being used and where the air is being brought into the car from. When the ice and water are first put into the cooler, it is about 34 degrees. After the system has run for 20 minutes or so the water temperature will settle to around 42 to 50 degrees and as the water gets warmer, the less effective both your cool suit and Helmet A/C systems become.

As I said before this Helmet A/C system can be used with any other water based systems with a Y adapter that we build per your specs. On the cooler we build has 2 separate hose plug in ports so of course the Y adapter is not needed.

We have spent years working on the Helmet A/C product and are now at the price range that is affordable to the weekend racer. Our website will be launched the week of the July 18th and will give a full price list, descriptions, and pictures of our products. Stay tuned for the details. As for those that emailed me I will inform you first.

Carrera GT

This thread is a useful compilation of up-to-date info on managing driver heat stress, so here's a relevant research piece from Stanford Uni on removing heat from the body to improve conditioning performance.

Ritter v4.0

Cool (pardon pun).
How about liquid nitrogen cooled steering wheel.