Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecky
I would include a waterjacket on your header to speed up warmup. Not too much area or you'll have to upgrade your radiator, but it'll probably help economy more than anything else you can do.
|
Well... I live in Australia, the temperature rarely hits less than 10 degrees C (50F) overnight (and almost never below 3-4C), and summer temps can get quite high, we've seen temps in the 45C (113F) range a few times in recent years. Plus I'm planning grille blocks, so improving exhaust insulation is likely to contribute to everything else under the hood being happier
Plus, I feel that keeping the exhaust velocity high at low RPMs (through good insulation) probably trumps savings on the warmup cycle for a 30m drive, particularly with a modern engine - as I understand it, with newer engines the cylinders and valve train come up to temp in 30s to a minute, and modern oils (especially the thin stuff that Hondas apparently like) don't stay sticky very long. This is just gut feeling though - I should look at what improvements people with electric block heaters get. Of course even then, gains from an electric block heater would be larger than a water-jacket setup so it wouldn't be exactly equivalent.