Thanks @brokestroke .

And this blanket disintegrated in 1 year?

Was it already shedding and coming apart as you found it?

Or was the hand itching fest a result of having to remove the blanket to switch turbos? (ie, disintegration accelerated by disturbance)

Turbo blankets can provide a small but measurable "boost" to turbo performance, and have other advantages in "cab cowl forward" engine compartments like the Super Duty was designed with, so I'm interested in your blanket's failure, and in your resolve to never use one again.

 

I too have had turbo blankets fall apart, the first was a low cost ($38) boost monkey blanket, The blanket quickly changed color from the heat, when I removed it after about 5,000 miles it was dusty and brittle. The internal wire had become brittle from the heat and fell completely apart. My hands became very itchy, it never went back on. I will see if it is on a shelf where I can get pictures of it.



On my "nicer" truck I installed a PTP lava blanket $165 They are hand made in the USA and seem to be a better quality, it was a splurge, I wanted to keep under hood temps down as much as I could. I has now be pulled off 5 times for adjustments or turbo swaps, I am still currently running it on my 363. It has held up better, the inside wire is starting to break apart from flexing during removal and re-install. Similar to Broke, I had an exhaust leak from a bad seal between down pipe and turbo outlet flange, this burnt through the edge of the blanket right by the perimeter seam, but hasn't caused any loos of its purpose. It also seems to control heat better then the boost monkey.

PTP Lava blanket

PTP also included a tag that clearly stated the longer a blanket is installed and exposed to the heat, the more brittle it will become and will be more easily be damaged in removal or re-install(the increase in brittleness will cause no issues as installed, just when disturbed). Their lava wrap is also very good quality, I have up pipes and down pipe wrapped in a way that there are 2 layers, I can drive my truck around, so it is at full operating temp, turn it off and stick my hand on the pipes without any burning.

I have not been able to really notice any performance gain from the blankets, this also was not my intent, I simply wanted cooler under hood temps, and maybe be lucky enough for it to reduce some noise(don't know that the noise reduction actually happened)

 

I'm glad you piped up with your experience with PTP @ESwift , because I didn't want to be alone in throwing a hot blanket on the cheap Chinese turbo blankets.

It isn't that quality turbo blankets are not capable of being made in China. I'm quite certain that excellent materials and manufacturing quality can be found in the military equipment that China is rapidly augmenting their arsenal with.

But the recently reported 4.9% growth in manufacturing that China has experienced this past quarter, post pandemic, appears to be concentrated in their exports, where the products made only pretend to fulfill what the buyer intends, because low price is the priority, and costs are cut in creative ways to meet the demand for lower price.

Low price is definitely what the USA market seeks. There are over 320 listings of T4 turbo blankets on Alibaba today, ranging in price from $8 to $20. What many eBay sellers and boutique aftermarket resellers do to make money is buy 50 to 100 pieces of a widget on Alibaba, for say $10 each, and then resell those widgets on eBay or Amazon or on their own boutique aftermarket part website for $30 to $40 each. Nice healthy margin. Some resellers do this with entire turbos. I've seen some stunningly realistic knock offs of Garrett Turbos, down to the product box appearance and laser etching details in the housings... but they were not genuine Garrett, even though Garrett manufactures many of their genuine products in China, especially while owned by Honeywell (they are now divorced).

The Black Monkey Turbo Blanket sells for $34.99 ..or Make Offer... meaning that the margin is high enough in the product to sell it for less upon request, and such a request would be reasonable on the part of the consumer because there are dozens of other turbo blankets on eBay for as little as $5.48, totaling to $10.50, including shipping.

It looks like brokestroke and ESwift tried to reach a little higher than the bottom rung, and paid almost 7 times as much for their turbo blankets from eBay, at $34.99.

The USA made turbo blankets that I propose giving some consideration to cost ten times that, or more like 70 times the price of the cheapest turbo blanket on eBay. So what is inside turbo blankets that cost $320-$370 compared to turbo blankets that cost $5? To answer that, we would have to know what the $5 turbo blanket is made of. Or the $35 blanket in this case. Only how would we know what the made in China blanket is actually made of? What it is claimed to be made of? Do they always tell the truth?

When a 6" wide jaw big heavy vice from China is $35, and a 6" wide jaw bullet vice from Wilton $2,140, we can kind of see a difference. But how do we see differences in textiles? The Chinese vice looks pretty solid when painted. Hard not to choose the cheaper option, especially when a vice is something that gets heated and beated on. But after a few licks with the OA torch and a couple of hard knocks, the paint chips or burns away, and we find swaths of bondo filling the incomplete and porous casting. In other words, the flaws are only found in usage, not at the time of purchase. And the bondo present in the Chinese vice is the physical embodiment of a bald face lie, told in action, by the manufacturer. So it becomes difficult to take the descriptions on Alibaba and eBay at their word.

I'm wondering if you would be willing to give turbo blankets another chance, like ESwift did, but this time stepping up to a domestic manufacturer?

I'll list three different USA manufacturers of turbo blankets below for you to consider:


Above: Design Engineering Incorporated, Akron Ohio, Supplies to US Military. The product depicted above is their most advanced basalt textile amalgam and seam stitching to date, using stainless steel thread.
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Above: Heatshield Products, Escondido California. Supplies to US Military. Supplied Gale Banks with blankets for 1,000 HP "Kill a Duramax" test cell engine. Banks supplies Duramax to Oshkosh for US Military.

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Above: PTP Turbo Blankets, Austin Texas. ESwift uses this blanket. This company offers the most turbo and vehicle application specific designs, that accommodate complexities like interference with wastegate actuation arms etc. Lowest cost domestic manufacturer that I have found. Products may or may not be as advanced as other two USA companies mentioned earlier. Not a GSA supplier.

If anyone else has any experience with any of the three companies mentioned above, or knows of any other turbo blanket or turbo heat shield product companies in the USA, then by all means speak up.