I was watching Mighty car mods and the most recent video from them is, Are intercoolers painted black more efficient than intercoolers not painted. The results actually surprised me. Here it is

 

I just watched it, but I wonder how that does on a car.

 

Definitely interesting..

I asked the shop who installed my Vortech to paint the intercooler and lower intercooler piping black just out of preference, been riding like that for 2 years.. so I guess it was worth it and didnt even know..!

 

Good find. I'm surprised. It would be interesting to see how black anodized would do.

 

So... the difference is negligable with air flow but without airflow black is WAY better... could help out at the drags during staging? But how much? Once the car gets moving the temps would drop quick. Plus the radiator fans can keep air moving (at least I set mine up to stay on during staging).

 

I don't think you will get any performance gains out of painting the intercooler black, but maybe prevent small amount of heat soak while sitting in traffic. I would really like to see a real world testing done on this though.

 

Black is for stealth. IMHO

 

Kinda wish they did testing on a real car / dyno.

 

I wonder if this applies to regular radiators as well?

 

^^^

Probably. It probably explains why most OEM radiators I have seen are black. Assuming your radiator fans are working, though, I don't know whether it will make much of a difference.

 

We can start a dyno fund for me and i'll check with my Godpseed setup 6 psi. I'm in the boston area

 

With a Black Thermal Dispersant Coating, you can get the benefits both on idle and while moving air through the intercooler.

Even with the simple painting they did it's still better to start close to 80°c colder from the dig or while waiting and staging at the drag strip.

 

Interesting ... I like to hear more about this

 

One note. I watched the video again, this time paying a little more attention.

The intercooler when painted black certainly performed much better than when it was unpainted when there was no airflow. So, for people sitting a lot in traffic or waiting in line at a drag strip before their run, it is the way to go.

When airflow was applied, though, the difference was negligible. Indeed, with air flow, the unpainted intercooler showed about 3% better efficiency than the painted intercooler based on the numbers they presented (100 deg. temperature difference between input and output of I/C unpainted vs 97 deg. temperature difference when painted). Again, this is negligible, and may even be due to small changes in the test setup between tests, or may be due to some insulation effect of the paint. But if your intercooler is getting a decent amount of airflow from your radiator fans, I would not expect the black paint to make a huge difference.

In my case, my intercooler does not get much airflow from the radiator fans, so it could help me. Then again, I don't spend much time sitting in traffic and my car is setup for road course use, not 1/4 mile.