[orbywan]

Here's some info I just got from Three Wheeler Jim that I thought some people might find interesting concerning belly pans and specifically the issue of hot exhaust areas and how to deal with them. Since I saw in his belly pan thread he was using pink fiberglass insulation to control the heat, I was asking him primarily on advice concerning wrapping the exhaust in critical places with Owens-Corning pink fiberglass because it has a very high melting point and is obviously a good insulator

There's also some info and questions on the design of wheel pants -

Originally Posted by 3-Wheeler

The area I want to wrap is up inside the second pan and I think will stay dry. I'll wrap it in alum foil to be sure. Should I remove the paper backing from the fiberglass?

Thanks Jim.

Rod

Hi Rod,

Whoops, I just saw your message.

Yes, by all means remove the paper. The paper only has a flash point of 400F or so, and the fiberglass melts over 2000F, because it's primarily glass.

I have wrapped the first cat con on the Insight with glass and experienced no overheat problems at all with the glass this close to the exhaust ports on the engine.

Hope this helps, Jim.[/QUOTE]

OK, I'll pick some up and start wrapping. I am way ready for this part of the job to be over, panning a vehicle this long is a major test of endurance.

I plan on building some wheel fairings to cut down on drag. Hucho's book says that the wind hits the front and rear wheels from the center of the vehicle outward due to bow wake, at an angle anywhere from 15 degrees on up to 50 or 60 degrees maybe. That really throws some weird stuff into the wheel pants design. Do you have any opinion on how I should go about designing the shape of wheel pants, especially on the duallies? Since the air could be hitting them diagonally at a 20 to 60 degree angle from the inside, that's going to make for some wacky shapes I would think.

There are so many variables here. I think this calls for some on demand smoke and adding a DVR to my camera system so I can do road tests with the smoke and record where the air is actually going, then design the pants accordingly, yes? I'm going to cut and paste this onto the thread too, I think lots of people might be interested in this. Hope you don't mind. Hopefully anyone with knowledge in this area will chime in.

Thanks for the help Jim!

Rod