Recently, a friend of mine with a Celica GTS, brought to my attention this website selling pheno spacers for our VQ35's. If you dont know what a pheno spacer is check out the site for more info. I used to have a nice quality pheno spacer on my old car, and it definetely worked keeping the manifold cooler, unfortuantely I never dyno tested it. Anyways just wanted to bring this to everybody's attention, does anybody have this? Will it raise the plenum too much to fit with a stock strut bar? Id be interested in something like this, I have a Crawford plenum, so I dont have to worry about the strut bar, but I dont think it will work with the clearance issues with the hood.

On a side note my friend pointed me to some results he found online on these spacers(on another car), if you want to look at them and make a decision check this out

 

The site lists them as "NextGear Thermoshield Gaskets" so I doubt that they would be thick enough to significantly raise the intake. We'll never know until someone buys them. I doubt that they are going to do much in stop and go traffic to keep the uppper and lower collectors or the lower intake manifold any cooler. Nice find.

 

It's not a spacer, it's an insulating gasket.

 

Yes, and no... Its something I had arleady posted in another thread visit http://www.hondata.com/heatshield.html

It basically stops heatsoak in the manifold, although its not reallly considered a "spacer" it does increase the height of the manifold and could be used as a spacer. This is a very good product because it uses a medical grade material that is heat resistant, worked great on my HONDA, id take this material over the other metal any day. And are a lot cheaper too! $60.00

 

not to mention it for a fwd vq35de, not the rwd thats in the Z.

 

How do you know that? I didnt catch that....and for the guy that said "its not a spacer" I know its not technically a spacer like AA newly developed one, thats just what everyone calls them. At least they did for my old car where these were very popular.

 

Yes, I saw that post. Very interesting idea, I'd agree. If you've ever touched the plenum after driving any distance, you quickly realize where the air is being heated.

I'd like to get a hold of some of that material, not just a small gasket sized piece.

 

Its a ricer trick. Like selling the honda kids light weight nuts and bolts. Telling them its sapce grade, yadda, yadda, and you can get them in colors.

Your paying a 110 bucks for a gaskest that costs $2 something.

 

Alberto it shows a pic of the gaskets, and its the gaskets for the fwd.

 

The only heat transfer that this is going to stop/slow is the heat transferred by direct contact between parts. How significant that heat transfer is compared to the heat transfer from just the under hood temperatures or the fact that the entire intake system is setting on top of an aluminum engine, I cannot comment on. It certainly cannot hurt as long as the gasket seal properly.

 

Playing around last night with thermodynamics after posing the idea to someone else. We came up with a ruff estimate for heating air and how long would be needed to be heated. Give give you an idea it would take 500 BTU's to heat 1/4 of a liter air to a temprature of 200 degrees in half a second. I don't believe there is a N/A motor out there and very few turbo cars that produce this kind of intake manifold temprature. So another words it useless.

 

Don't you mean "So in other words, it's useless"?

Sorry, I just had to.

 

Ya got me!

 

Looks like this insulator is going between the lower plenum and the intake ports to the heads. It is not an upper plenum spacer. I ordered this thing and will install it with a phenolic 3/8" upper plenum spacer/insulator. With the two combined, the temp of the airstream should be significantly cooler/denser. The added volume from the upper plenum spacer should assist flow as well. I will dyno before and after to see if it does any good. Probably take me a few weeks to get done, but I will post results.

 

It's a ricer trick taken from the old-school muscle car crowd. Phenolic spacers is very old technology and they used to be made out of wood, IIRC.

Regardless, I had a set on my Z. I paid $65 for a spacer between the lower plenum and intake manifold and a spacer between the throttle body and upper plenum. The kit also came w/ a throttle body coolant bypass kit, but I didn't install it.

Michael.

 

Moved.