Anyone have recommendations for heat containment? Therma-Tec has good stuffs, but it ugly. I want to contain heat from wires and other plastics surrounding the hot exhaust. Is there any type of special coatings, sleeves or covers to use?

 

There are heat protection sleeves .. Other than ceramic coating . Shields in the critical hot spots ( turbine housing) with sand wedged fibreglass cloth . Works very well..holding wires or anything away permanently away from heat is good security.. Not too keen on fully covering turbine housing with diaper ? But it works ..

 

Coat and wrap the piping itself first. That's the best step to keep the heat out in the first place rather than trying to keep it off other things. I only recommend turbo blankets on chra's with water cooling, there are long term side effects keeping all that heat in on an oil cooled only turbo.

 

What are the long term side effects? If you let it idle and cool down you wouldn't cook the oil. Just wondering.

 

People always just think oil coking, this very rarely happens with modern synthetic oils. The heat retention causes accelerated wear in the chra, ie decreased bearing and seal life, especially with sleeve/journal bearings. Its more about over heating the center section when there is no oil. Oil does a rather shitty job of cooling a turbo in the first place. I see 200-220 degree oil temps on normal driving and 240-280 degrees on hard pulls. So that's the temp going into the chra to lube the bearing and remove any heat... Where as water cooling from the cold side of your cooling system comes in at 120-140degrees. And water absorbs way more heat than oil. Hence why motors are water cooled and oil lubed. Imho every turbo should be water cooled and then oil lubed or no oil if you run oil-less is even better. So back to blankets, they catch heat in the area between the blanket and the turbine and forces it back in, which is great for keeping heat out of the engine bay and not having to see a rust bucket lol. But that heat retention in the turbine creeps into the chra. So say with out a blanket, some spirited street driving, come to a stop let the car idle for a minute and your turbine housing temp is around 600-800 degrees and its letting out heat pretty well and after a few more minutes its down to a reasonable 300-400 degrees like the rest of the exhaust. Throw a blanket on it, go for that same drive and come to a stop after a minute idle, now the turbine housing temp is 1200-1400 degrees, a few minutes later it is still 800-900 degree and then finally 12-15 minutes later its down to that normal 300ish degree for exhaust when you shut a car off. Which setup is going to allow more heat to soak back into the center section after the oil flow has stopped which is instant when you shut the car off? I just picked some random numbers for temps but they are pretty close to what I was seeing back when I had oil only fed turbos and did a lot of temp testing. I was burning up the hotside seal every 6-8 months of street driving with the blanket on. I will never recommend a blanket for a street car oil only fed turbo at most I would is coat the turbine housing itself, this will keep heat inside the turbine to go out the exhaust in the first place, vice trying to catch the heat outside the turbine with a blanket. Oil lubed and water cooled turbo? Shit yeah throw a blanket on it all day. What's great about the water cooling is it doesn't stop when you shut the car off. The water doesn't stop coming in and then drain to a pan. The coolant system is closed loop and pressurize so it will continue to flow and remove heat even after the car is shut off and the water pump stops turning. You also benefit from thermal siphoning which prolongs the water circulation. As heat is absorbed by the water it gets hotter and begins to flow towards the hotside of your cars cooling system, this movement in turn draws cooler water in from the coldside feed of your coolant system. This prolongs flow and promotes heat removal even after the car is driven hard and then shut off.

My recommendations for a street setup, if you can get the turbo out of the engine bay (oven) thats step one. Front mount, forward of the radiator, in the fender, low mount, remote mount will all perform better and generate less heat. Coat all hot piping period. Wrap all piping pre turbo when possible to help keep heat in the pipes and turbine. The more heat you keep in the exhaust, through the turbine and out the muffler like its supposed to be, the less heat you radiate on other things and you also pick up transient response and spool. Get a water cooled turbo, for street use the benefits far out weigh the initial cost imho.