question - can something as simple as a gasket give you power ? well heres an insight and anwser 😉
And on the car
after being pointed in the direction of these ( as there made for other make of cars and used in some high performance applications ) and asked if i could produce one for some testing , i set about my homework :lol: did my research and then found a suitable material thats found more at home in jet engine and alike doing the same thing ( heat barriers ) And so -
for possibly the majority that dont know what one is and its purpose , in essence its a inlet manifold gasket that acts as a barrier between the manifold and engine head and stops the heat transfer from head to inlet manifold and keeping the inlet path and airflow as cool as possible.
i had the gasket fitted on thursday with 3 runs before its fitment and a few few more after
the ambiant temp was the same at 10 degrees for all runs
and for the runs that we took the data that follows were done after the car had been running for 10mins before the run with the fans on to get some heat sock in the engine so we could see the difference better ( if there was one or not ) i was expecting to see a difference but not to the extent of what the drop in temp at the manifold runner was.
the temps were measured at the mapsensor as per usual and the manifold temps measured using a infer red temp gun .
The start and finishes are at the beginning of the dyno run and finish is at the end of the dyno run.
............................................without thermal..................with thermal
.................................................. ..gasket....................................gasket
coolant start temp ...............76...................................77
coolant finish temp...............82...................................81
intake temp at map..............14...................................15
sensor start
intake temp at map..............27...................................27
sensor finish
manifold temp at.................48...................................38
runner start
manifold temp at.................42...................................25
runner finish
as the results show there is a massive difference of temp at the manifold between having the gasket fitted and not ,the only bit tha confused us is that the manifold with the gasket fitted actually drop below the intake charge measured at the map sensor ( ok its only 2 degrees) and could possibly be down to the ambiant temp reducing it that bit more . but all in all the gasket does work .
dyno run figures are as follows with and avarage taken from the 2 runs for both. ( although they were very similar ,and only a couple of bhp and lbft between them ) and remember this was with heat soak -
without gasket run 356bhp - 316 lbft
with themal gasket fitted - 368bhp - 327lbft
so on avarage i had a 12bhp increase and 11lbft at peak but the nice thing was its also through out the hole rev range , and you can defenatly feel it to and also feel that bit more reponsive.
i also did a run without the heat soak and the result was quite a shock as it hit 380bhp and 334lbft as previously the highest run was 365 bhp and 319 lbft and this is still with the standard internals :lol::lol: