The firewall is a rather busy spot and might be fun to find room to mount something that "big". The fender well.....maybe.

 

I am not thinking of mounting the FICM on the firewall or fender.

Visualize a bracket that is anchored on the fender and firewall.

Kind of like the reinforcing bar people put across the MacPherson strut towers of a unibody.

The FICM would still be in same place roughly, but lifted at least 1" from the engine --- with a heat shield in between.


The idea is to capture the majority of the benefits of the E van style mounting without having to get new harnesses or extensions.

 

This is what you are probably trying to protect from:



TheDieselGarage.com - View Single Post - Swamps Diesel Hot FICM Tests

 

why not mount a solid state thermoelectric device to the ficm.? they both heat & cool by reversing the dc connection. smalll refrigerators use these devices.

 

That does nothing for vibration and mechanical stress..

Plus.. you can overcool it as well.

The heat at the critical spots (e.g. at the devices, solder joints, etc.) is far hotter than the "cooled" outside.

Much better to leave wide safety margins.

 

Plus those TECs need large heatsinks to dissipate the heat they produce on the hot side. And they use A LOT of power.

 

If you think in terms of potential failure modes and effects, it is always better to have a "soft" failure.

A passive cooling system fails "soft".

An active one...harder.

An active one with a fan.. a bit hard.. a solid state fridge / refrigerator, fails very hard.

Then you are asking, how is it "alarmed" so you know it failed?

Remember --- if you get "cool" next to it, on a humid day, water would condense there as well.

So do you really want to use a cooler?

 

too many negative results to use tec, how about a small axial fan? or would you use
reflective foil, like kind used near the exhaust?

 

You got several problems:

A) vibration --- that have to be taken care of with a way to decouple it from the motor.

B) heat --- there is an issue of radiated heat as well as an issue with conducted heat.

Where heat is being radiated against it, reflective heat shield is a no brainer.

Conductive heat transfer and also convection, is harder, as there is both heat generated and dissipated by the device itself.

So you need a cool air source, delivered there in an insulated duct, with some sort of powered air mover (fan).

And some way to ensure that not much water / moisture gets drawn in with the air.

Not a simple problem.

 

does anybody know if cabinman finished his isolated/seperate battery idea for
this problem?My thought is another battery to fail/ let you down! I like the capacitor idea, heat shield & outside air pumped across it.

 

I am not so sure about the size of the capacitor you would need to supply the power that the FICM require for any length of time.

If you do the battery right, it is a UPS thing that only comes in after there is a failure in the "mains" power supply.



In a certain cerebral challenged "improvement" or "upgrade" touted by certain parties, they replaced the 125 degrees C capacitors with 105 degree rated capacitors that ostensibly are rated for higher voltages for the FICM.

So what is already a module operating near its thermal limits is now derated further by the use of inferior components that is flogged to the buyer as "superior".


I was tempted to start posting lessons on how electrolyte capacitors fail and the kind of things that can happen to the FICM when it does....


There are lots of modders out there trying to sell "performance" parts that are the 80186 CPU of the business.... as Bill Gates said.

I keep thinking I should import Chinese knock offs and sell them as "high performance" parts here...

 

would'nt it be simpler to have a spare ficm, im not shure what they cost/or if its that easy?

 

Not if your goal is to ensure it doesn't fail to begin with ---- by providing it with the proper shock, vibration, thermal, and other things electronics like --- like good power.

 

Im worried my ficm will fail from heat soaking, so im checking the temp of the ficm with a westward digital thermometer (+/- 1%) & type k thermocouple attached to the bottom of the ficm heat sink. On a 90 degree day after 1/2 hr warm up the max temp driving was 168 degrees f & 180 degrees f after shutting off the engine, and waiting 15 min. Then it began to cool down, 2 hrs later its @ 145 degrees f. Tommorrow im going to insulate the ficm from the engine with a couple of ov gloves & post the results.

 

Careful you don't insulate it from airflow. I metal head shield between the engine and FICM (closer to the engine) would work better.