Thread: Is painting the SC housing bad?

I thoght while I have so much torn off I could paint the housing. I'd prefer to have it polished or chromed but that isnt n the budget right now. I thought of painting it flat black but wasnt sure if this is bad. Would the paint trap heat thus robbing HP?

Paint, sorta, but not enough to really notice. Powder coating, or plating...yes, but few will disagree.

I have temp. readings from a 100% stock M90 to a polished one. One thing FieroX and I were doing years ago as a way of testing in real time environments. The polished GenIII to my stock GenIII was cooler but about 10-11*F.

~F~

Thanks!

dude, please don't paint your SC. I really think they never turn out that great. You've got a nice looking car. Save it and get it polished by the polishing madman.

Can you measure the temp of your snout as well?

Originally Posted by DerekD

What would you think is the best way to test this? I have a GenV that is powdercoated red. I would imagine that one of those meters you aim at the heat source would work the best. I have a thermocouple wire that plugs into my fluke meter that I could probably secure to it. I could run it out of the hood and leave the meter on the hood, then let the car sit there and idle. I also have a surface probe that plugs into the meter but I would have to actually hold that against the surface. And then, I imagine I would want another GenV for reference doing the same thing.

We shot an inferred temp. gun at it. To tell the difference between two blowers, you have to have a control as a reference, and keep all plains the same during your testing.

~F~

Originally Posted by SD GTP

dude, please don't paint your SC. I really think they never turn out that great. You've got a nice looking car. Save it and get it polished by the polishing madman.

I disagree if you do it right.

I know that on our circle track motors the block, heads & top of intake are all painted black & the underside of the intake is painted white. I know that it's an old shool trick, but black does dicipate heat better than other colors & also makes my $10000 motor look like crap & people don't really wonder what's in it. Also the white is supposed to conduct heat the least out of all colors. I remember reading something that said that a polished surface dicipates heat the worst, I also remember seeing something on Horsepower TV a few months ago about this also.
In reality I can't see it making any really difference on our cars (well street cars), but in racing (especially cirlce track) where you're beating on somthing much harder & longer & need consistancy then I can see it being something to consider.

Good points!

Originally Posted by RNUOVR

I know that on our circle track motors the block, heads & top of intake are all painted black & the underside of the intake is painted white. I know that it's an old shool trick, but black does dicipate heat better than other colors & also makes my $10000 motor look like crap & people don't really wonder what's in it. Also the white is supposed to conduct heat the least out of all colors. I remember reading something that said that a polished surface dicipates heat the worst, I also remember seeing something on Horsepower TV a few months ago about this also.
In reality I can't see it making any really difference on our cars (well street cars), but in racing (especially cirlce track) where you're beating on somthing much harder & longer & need consistancy then I can see it being something to consider.

I hope TooMch sees this and posts what a local performance shop owner told him about the positve effect of black paint. This shop builds Vipers, Vettes and the like. It is old school but apparently works very well.

Learned a long time ago in high school auto shop when we were rebuilding TH350 transmissions, and a guy/guest speaker was there who owned a company who builds race transmissions. He said they always paint their transmissions black for the reason that black dicipates heat the best. He said don't ask him why, but out of all the colors of the rainbow, black does the best, so they run with what they know and have persionally tested.

~F~

Originally Posted by IndeedSS

I hope TooMch sees this and posts what a local performance shop owner told him about the positve effect of black paint. This shop builds Vipers, Vettes and the like. It is old school but apparently works very well.

Originally Posted by GR8racingfool

Learned a long time ago in high school auto shop when we were rebuilding TH350 transmissions, and a guy/guest speaker was there who owned a company who builds race transmissions. He said they always paint their transmissions black for the reason that black dicipates heat the best. He said don't ask him why, but out of all the colors of the rainbow, black does the best, so they run with what they know and have persionally tested.

~F~

This could be the guy my guy was talking about. My local guy was having trouble with tranny temps and went to a long time transmission builder who told him to paint ot black. My guy (Joe) didn't but it because it went against everything he knew. He ended up trying it on one of the 3 Vipers and it ended up being the coolest of the bunch. Now all his racing transmissions are black.