Heat bad for your car? Ways to cool it?
 

Hi guys, new here and I just bought my first car. A white-out FRS :thumbup:

Had a Miata (was my parents). Rear-ended and totaled :(.

Anyways, I live in an area where it gets to 115+ multiple times a year. I noticed my miata and my GFs Accent don't feel quite right after about 110+. The best way I can describe is, the cars start feeling.. lazy? especially my GFs car. I'm sure on the pavement it's probably another 20-30 degrees hotter too.

I was wondering if this is putting wear the drivetrain? And if so, what could be done to help keep the engine cool? For example, maybe a cold air intake?

I actually had another question that I'll ask here so I don't have to start a new thread. I've been trying to teach my GF stick but she is too scared. Anyone have any advice on how I can convince my GF to learn? I think it's something important that everyone should know how to do.

Move north? A cold-air intake provides cooler, denser air for the intake system, typically farther away from the engine heat under the hood. When the air itself is on fire, what can you do?

You lose a bit of power when it's that hot, as the air isn't as dense. A CAI would help a *tiny* bit, in theory. Maybe not a noticeable difference. Your GF would probably be more comfortable learning to drive stick in a car no one cares about.. not your FRS. Find her an old beater civic/corolla/focus or whatever, teach her the basics, and send her out to learn by driving on her own. I taught my gf with my corolla that way. She's decent now... but will still never drive my FRS lol.

Funny story about teaching our GFs stick shift. My dad owned a '69 Boss 429 when he was in his early 20s. How he taught my mom to drive it was she needed a ride home from my dads office. He threw her the keys and said, "I have to get to an emergency meeting. You better just drive home, I'll be a few hours." Pretty ballsy of my dad haha

My GF drove my Miata in a parking lot and didn't stall it once. I think she will be fine with the FRS. The miata had an awesome trans but this FRS is AMAZING.

I'll look into the CAI. The laziness might have been because my Miata and my GFs accent are pretty old so maybe a newer car will be fine?

drive w/o a hood

Some cars will pull timing when it is very hot, thus less power.

Your FR-S will be OK in the heat as long as it's not FI.

humfrz

Ah, of course, of course. And I'll hook up a mister :D

Okay, great! Thanks for the help!

I bet if you ran e85, the cooling effect of the fuel would counteract the heat pretty well. You'd just need a tune. Course you'd need a station with it nearby.

Stock intake already pulls dense air from infront of the bumper. You could always just get a tube replacement to smooth out the air between the filter box and the intake.

You might also want to get an oil cooler. But this is way more expensive than an intake tube replacement.

Run your AC vents into your intake. BAM Instant Cold Air.

1. Offer your FRS a bowl of water, or ice cream.
2. A cold air intake is not going to "keep the engine cool".
3. How are you going to teach a woman to drive? Do you have a very large kitchen?

When i drove to Vegas last month it did feel like i lost some power, i couldnt imagine being out there all summer..an oil cooler would definately be my first mod if i lived there

I'm here to answer one thing about the learning manual transmission part:

I learned on my FRS. I'm still learning, but one could say I'm getting good enough for it not to be a problem anymore.

The best way to teach someone would be to show her a few videos showing the basic technique (two of my favorites are
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhRwgRN3f1A"]this one[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slBxtYWKdjo"]this one[/ame])

and teaching her how a transmission/clutch works.

I learned that and I quickly got the hang of it. Needed a few tricks from this very forum and a friend of mine, but so far, I'm getting good with it. Patience is required, I had to learn in a parking lot and I stalled at first, a lot.

The hardest part of driving a manual is getting the feel of the clutch and learning to downshift.

The idea of some members to learn in a beater is a good one. I wish I could have done that, but in my case it was not possible. Now I'm not going to be racing with heel and toe tomorrow, but I'm almost out of the break in period and I feel comfortable with the car now :)

I'm confused. Isn't driving school duty's to teach how to drive (manual)?

The amount of people learning to shift AFTER getting their driving license puzzle me.

'MURICA!!!!

It's different in North America. You can pass the road tests with an automatic, and you are able to drive either. Most people just get someone to teach them manual and are left to their own devices after that. It would seem to make more sense to learn before getting a license though, but everyone I know who drives stick was never in any sort of accident while adapting.

I hired a midget day laborer to stay in my engine compartment to blow cool air over the whole compartment using wrigley's spearmint gum. His life span was regrettably reduced to 28.6 seconds after the hood closed. But that was the coldest 28.6 seconds of my cars life. It purred with power. Oh the sacrifices we all make in the name of science.

-Chuck

The problem is that the driver's school doesn't force you to drive manual. I learned on an automatic and had ONE class in manual. That class was with an idiot who couldn't even be bothered to look at what I was doing most of the time and completely reclined his seat back chewing gum... interesting guy to say the least.

So I had to learn on my own and with videos. But you can, and should, learn to drive a manual in driving school.

:)

Why not an Intercooler? Kind of surprised no one has said this..?

If your gf doesn't want to learn for whatever the reason is don't bother.
She won't take it seriously enough, and well depending where she is on the hot/crazy scale it could end in disaster.
When she's ready she'll come to you and ask.

She is just really timid about this sort of stuff. She is scared she will wreck it but she is a really good driver.

I'm also loving all the smart-ass responses haha cracking me up :lol:

I knew that a cold air intake wouldn't keep the engine cooler haha I was just trying to get an example out there. When the wind blows here it feels like a damn sauna. But it looks like there are a number of options for keeping it a little cooler. We only have about another month left before it starts to slowly cool off so I'll probably wait until next March before I do anything.

An intercooler doesn't make the intake air any cooler.
Really.
Not unless you have dry ice in it or something.
An intercooler takes forced induction charged air which gets heated up in the compression process and tries to cool it down to ambient air temp, or water temp if its water to air, but it'll never get cooler than ambient.

The intercooler can't make the air any cooler than the outside air temperature - which is what is already coming in the intake. The intercooler is only useful when you have a turbo/supercharger. The air heats up when you compress it, then you cool it back to ambient.

oops root beat me to it.

Bushman, I'm not sure there is much you can do about lowering the air intake temp. However installing an oil cooler and larger capacity radiator should ensure that you never have to worry about your engine running too hot and retarding the timing:thumbsup:

It's insultingly easy to get a license here in the US. It's downright criminal that you take tests that a monkey can pass and then all of a sudden you can drive around in a 5500lb SUV. Things you don't have to do to get a license:

-drive on an interstate (our high speed roads)
-learn what to do in a spin/slide
-panic brake, to understand how ABS works
-parallel park (required in some states but not mine, NC)
-drive in the rain
-drive at night

Instead our lazy government thinks they can keep regulating cars to be safer and safer, making them heavier and more expensive. Meanwhile the basic driver's test hasn't been updated since before the interstate road system was built.

:offtopic::bonk:

All cars get a lot slower at those temps, don't worry about it. The car was likely tested in much higher temperatures and is made to run in such temps, physics just prevents it from running as strong as if it was 60 degrees outside. Nothing you can do about it without wasting a ton of money on little gain.

and turn the fan on high = turbo + intercooler:bonk:

That's really interesting. Thank you.

(On a sidenote, in some Swiss writing tests from getting your driving license, it may happen to spot questions like "what's the correct amount of space you have to keep between your car and a tank?" Yes, a tank!)

It almost sounds like perpetual energy to run your a/c, which takes power, and run the cold air to the intake to make more power, but i think some companies experimented with that. I think the Ford Lightning?
Ah, just looked it up, it was a concept car and the a/c "charged" up a cooling resivour that would dump into the intercooler to give added cooling for a limited amount of time. Supposed to give you a boost when demanded, but once used up would take some time to recharge.
You could try water injection, but that can be a tricky thing. Again limited to when you run out of water.

Freeze car overnight?

When I and other people autox we often put bags of ice in our intake box so it can suck in cold air (I have a injen SRI so the box it comes with is perfect for this). This helps alot for short driving. So my suggestion to you is to install a ice maker machine in your engine bay and have it feed fresh ice straight into the intake box!

Funny... my friend (editor at Import Tuner) is doing a MPG build on a Civic, testing out a "warm air intake".

Apparently it's meant to improve fuel mixture and increase volumetric efficiency.

We shall see.

-alex

You want to know about slower cars in the summer, come here to Abu Dhabi! 120+ degrees with over 100% humidity! Not fun!

On teaching the girlfriend, just keep at it. I had the same problem teaching my wife and she wasn't just learning stick it was learning to drive period. At first it was terrible because she's the type that gets frustrated quickly if she doesn't pick something up right away. But with a little patience on my part and persistence on hers she not only got it after 3 tries but drives better then most people I know. Though she still prefers autos.

Teach her to drive a motorcycle first. once you know how to do that it's an easy conversion. ;)

my advice, just dont worry about it. engines are hot, the air is hot, engine is still hotter. If you really worry about it, maybe consider different fluids (oil, tranny, coolant)

Well, I've been to places that feel that the humidity is over 100% ...... however, 100% is the highest relative humidity possible....... http://www.runemasterstudios.com/gra...ages/smile.gif ..... outside of a pressure cooker or something like that ..... :D

humfrz