Hey Brady - been a while. Hope all is well with you guys!

Haven't thought a ton about the rock shield but I may whip up some sort of aluminum inner fender type deal there protect it a bit.

 

It's been raining a ton on and off here so haven't been able to get much done aside from arts & crafts...
Well, at least the sun came out for a little while between the rain downpours the last few days so I was able to finish this today:


I painter the intercooler black because I've learned they dissipate heat better this way (at least at a stop - they flow the same while moving/with air flowing through).



But I also decided to get a little creative on the front side since it will show a little bit...



Arts & crafts time at night after the kiddo is asleep.



Taped up



A bit of paint



And you get this! Should look kinda cool peeking out from behind the grill




I've also got the pass side grill insert in with the new hardware & did a bit with the support bracket for 1 of the 4 swingers on the AMP steps. Once it dries out a little the intercooler & grille will go back on & I'll get back to the exhaust, look at this support for the AMP steps & start messing with the e-brake.

 

That's bad a just sayin

 

I thought about doing the same sort of thing but with a cummins logo. I ended up not doing it because it would've bugged me to hide it behind the center bar of the grill. Yours came out really nice though.

 

That's Cool! Why do they cool better painted? Should I paint my aluminum radiator?

 

Thanks.


I told my buddy yesterday to just do a simple star in his. I also thought about the Ford Logo maybe. I went with the skull because it will kind of looming & hidden like he's peering out behind the bars. It's something you might catch in a rear view mirror, but most likely not. I kinda like the semi hidden details.


Something about the color helping with heat dissipation. There was a link to a video about it in C0425's thread somewhere... They did some testing with a infrared thermo, etc. on a street car. The intercooler dropped outet air temps while sitting still but the car running once they painted it black. Once the car was moving though & air was flowing through the fins there was no real difference in outlet air temp. But yes, your radiator might benefit from this.

 

MightyCarMods on YouTube did this experiment too, and the results are pretty drastic:

Put a hair dryer with a silicone coupler on one end of the intercooler with an inlet thermometer (digital thermocouple). Put a thermocouple on the outlet of the intercooler to measure the outlet temperature. Turn on the hair dryer and wait for the outlet temperature to stabilize. Measure the inlet and outlet temperatures, and subtract the outlet temp from the inlet. For example, if the inlet is 180*F, and the Outlet is 130*F, then the intercooler effectively lowered the temperature by 50*

Then, they repeated the experiment with the intecooler painted gloss black. The inlet temperature stayed the same, but the outlet temperature was much lower - the black paint helped radiate heat. I don't remember offhand what the final reading was, but it was significantly cooler than with the intercooler painted black, and the change in temperature was greater.

-Brad

 

There are three different ways that heat can transfer from one thing to another: conduction, convection and radiation.

Conduction is when something solid that's hotter is actually touching something solid that's colder. So if you put your hand on the fins it will transfer heat into your hand. Doesn't really factor in with a radiator or intercooler. But coating one of the parts with something that doesn't transfer heat well (like a welding glove) reduces coductive heat transfer.

Convection is what everyone thinks about with a radiator or intercooler. It's when something solid gives off heat to (or takes heat in from) a fluid (liquid or gaseous, air is a fluid). You can make it more effective by increasing the flow of the fluid (forced convection, blowing the air through the fins). and you can reduce it by insulating.

Radiation isn't thought about much, but apparently it's pretty significant. Radiation conducts heat even without any contact with a solid, liquid or gas. It's how heat gets to earth from the sun. And like sunlight heating things up, radiation heat transfer works better on black surfaces, and least on light colored or reflective surfaces. That's why asphalt gets so hot in the sun, and whe snow doesn't melt as fast as it might on sunny days.

So black paint significantly improves radiation heat transfer. The surprising thing is that readiation is such a big factor in an intercooler. but apparently it is.

 

I am only this far in your thread so far, I have been following the "Prerunner" thread. I agree with "TowmanJBO" since I drove for a towing company for a year, both a wrecker and a rollback, and I used the t hooks as a first choice. The fish hooks I only used on wrecks since I wasn't worried about bending anything or crushing brake lines at that point. I used the t hooks on the stinger tows as a safety as well as on the sling tows. On the roll back, I was able to get the vehicle closer to the winch by having the pull point that much further aft of the bumper

 

Since I got a reply notice & logged in I might as well give a little update...

Rains have stopped, but a busy work schedule took over in their absence. Lump on top of that getting my trailer back from a buddy who had it for over a year and pretty much trashed the thing & my work on the crew has stopped. I have nowhere to store the trailer any more so it's going up for sale, but now I've gotta re-wire it & do a bunch more work to clean it back up before I can list it. Yay friends...


I have done a little on the crew but no pics. I've been messing with the radiator mount to finalize that before the intercooler & grill go back on for a while. LOTS of little stuff I hope to get to next week as work should be slow/quiet. We will see.

Merry Christmas to all! May your trees & stockings runneth over with parts needed for your builds!

 

Sorry about that with the trailer.

 

Time for an over due, yet small update again.

Trailer has been re-painted, straightened a bit and has new lights with a bit of new wiring. Once I'm back in town (I head out Friday for a week in Bend OR - yay!) I'll get it listed on a couple more classifieds pages & really get at trying to sell it.

I've also spent a little time here & there on the truck. Week between Christmas & New Years wasn't as quiet as I had hoped at work, but I did squeeze in a little truck time!

Exhaust got a slight adjustment & then tacked for what I hope is the final time. I am looking at hangers next. Hoping to have a little time before fri but I doubt it.

As I said I did mess with my radiator mount that I designed & had cut a LONG time ago.
Here it is at 1st fitment. I wish I would have paid a little more attention to getting this thing centered/aligned with the center of the core support, but for some reason it didn't even dawn on me til I had punched the 1st set of holes & I saw the middle hole in this bracket being off from the middle hole in the core support. That is a detail that is going to bug me forever



Here's how it holds the radiator down with the rubber cushioning. Notice the bracket is a little tall up top here. I couldn't get the design perfect with a cardboard template that I turned into a cad file, so I got it close & figured I may have to cut a bit. I did, but it wasn't bad at all.



Here's how close it sits to the intercooler (IC is the matte black thing to the right of the shiny end tank on the radiator). I think I should be good for not having the air "escape" out the sides as that should not be the path of least resistance with this setup.



Here's the bracket cleaned up a bit a couple days later. Looks like it was designed this way I think.




Since I now have the radiator in, I've gone back to looking at the hoses for that. Made a list of what I need & added it to my birthday list since that is coming up & the wife asked. I also threw on a bulkhead connector I want, a fuse box and a couple other odds & ends I'll need to buy for this thing.

I have in the past been known to order things twice since I am taking so darn long on this build and forget I ordered stuff (I have a spare set of u-bolts for the rear axle due to this!), so I wanted to make sure I hadn't in fact ordered the radiator hoses already. I know I had looked at them before, but I couldn't say for sure I didn't have the hoses. In looking I dug up the IC boots so I could test fit my IC tubes again. Been so long I couldn't remember if they were "done" or not. See a pattern here???

IC tubes were in fact done (aside from powdercoat) & fit well.



The one radiator hose I do have can be seen here too



I hope to have a buddy stop by on Friday & help me get the bed picked up a bit so I can get the rear shock mount off the truck. I can then weld up the upper shock mounts finally & get that off to powdercoat along with the IC tubes. As usual, keeping my fingers crossed that I have time to get to it...

 

Do you recall what that radiator is for, application wise, or did you just order it per measurements?

I will be doing my own drop center hood and debating how I'll be tackling the radiator and core support. Unfortunately I don't have the resources or but a fraction of the talent in order to duplicate yours.

 

Thanks for the compliment!

Radiator is a "generic" one. It's made by northern & is a 19" x 27" dual pass type with the outlets on the pass. side "Chevy" style. I got it from speedwaymotors.com if I remember right. It's actually the 3rd one I've bought for the truck...

1st was an old nascar radiator off eBay. It was pretty sweet, but then a buddy pointed out the difficulty I may have in finding a replacement to fit if I made custom mounts for it.
That lead me to something easy to replace, so I went with a 19" x 31" generic one with chevy style inlet/outlet. That was too wide to fit between the frame rails, so it sat too high & wouldn't work well.
I then went smaller to this one, but added the double pass to make up for the cooling I may have lost. Not sure I really need a dual pass as these motors tend to run cool I guess, but I won't know for sure til I get the thing running in 10 years...

 

Looking good sir.... I still luv the radiator support. that turned out really well...