Insulating the Intake Manafold

[Corona]

If heard talk of this before on the net somewhere (May have enven been here) about insulating the Intake manafold from the head.

Now that I have finaly got the intercooler working on my car, I notice how hot the intake is.

Does anybody make a thermal insulating gasgets, or know of what I can make one out of?

[Lloyd]

That bakerlite stuff like the inlet manifold gaskets are made of on the 20Vs? Pretty sure that would be a reasonable heat insulator

[Corona]

Wouldent Bakerlite be too brittle in this situation? Agree that it would have good insulation tho

[Lloyd]

Well they use a chunk of it as a ~10mm thick gasket on the 20 valves so I would imagine thats pretty much what you're after.

If you want to be a bit extreme about it then get one of those made up and build yourself up a heat shield

[Corona]

Yea, that wouldent break, easily.

But where would one find any that size?

[TrouserFxGt]

phenolic would be the way to go.

[ee904age]

We used some asbestos from Motor Machinists on a sigma we built. I think it was about 10mm, and worked a treat.

[Corona]

asbestos

[atmosports]

Yeap Polyethylene, Phenolic or Birchwood is the stuff to use for insulating gaskets, also make sure you drill/ream any bolt/stud holes out for extra clearance & run a plastic washer between the the nut & manifold etc to further insulate. If your too lazy to make up a gasket etc, Gizzmo's should be able to supply them as I've had them do oddball V8 ones for me. No idea on costing though.

[Corona]

What sort or thicknesses are the ones that you get, as space is an issue on my car. (Manafold is already touching the firewall on launch)

[Malcolm]

here's something I had briefly contemplated in the past, but put it into the "too hard/can't be bothered atm" bin. You could get the insulating material cut to mimic the TVIS plates (minus butterflies). Even better you could get them to mimic TVIS plates that have been ported to improve the transition from 2 ports to one (per cylinder), to reduce turbulence. IF you did this I would buy 2 pairs off you, and could even supply such ported plates to be copied.
Problem? Well they would need to be cut on a 5 axial CNC machine, and could be quite expensive to get drawn up.

[atmosports]

You can get them made in whatever thickness you can get the base material in, I usually use 3mm, but have gone down to 1mm & used up to & over 12mm before, it depends on the application really with how much you can move things around & how long the studs/bolts etc are.

[ants_ae92]

I recently tried an experiment on my 4age (16v tvis). Took the water pipes off that go to the throttle body, they heat the manifold up quite a bit. Im not going to use a cold idle as the wax idle up on mine is stuffed any way, and just use the throttle screw to adjust idle.

I noticed a big drop in the temperature of outside of the intake manifold (touch and feel gauge). But I need to block off the idle air valve inside the throttle body to make it work.

The gaskets used (dont know what they are called, black stuff) and the tvis plate help insulate the manifold from engine. Maybe you could try something similar.

Karl skewes does this on his motors, try asking him for info.
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