Quote:
Originally Posted by Daox
I know the guys up north have problems with keeping their Insights warm in winter. The small aluminum block coupled with oversized grills, low coolant volume and autostop make for coolant temperatures that are all over the place.
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With the start-stop technology becoming a significant factor the blocks heat radiating ability becomes much more significant. If you are going to consider extracting heat from waste heat energy then reducing the waste heat energy amount in the first place makes much sense to me. Eliminate the waste and the recovery or same energy becomes unnecessary.
The iron blocks resistance to heating up and cooling off is supposedly about 25% of aluminum. That's huge when you think of minimizing heat losses.
Another point they touched on is the cooling system itself. I think they are talking about a dual path radiator, which if I understand the concept reduces coolant heat loss by restricting the radiator volume when it is not necessary. In other words adjusting the radiator capacity to suit the ambient temperature and average engine load. When both are low there is a huge difference in the necessary cooling capacity with extreme examples being the heater core itself provides adequate cooling.
It shows they are really looking into ways of preventing the 60+% heat energy losses to the exhaust and cooling systems.
regards
Mech