• Registered: 2009-10-06
  • Posts: 550

Topic: Cool suit cooler

I placed my order for some cool suit shirts, plumbing, and cooler with the Ultra Chill people mentioned in the other thread.  Thanks for the pointer.  Now, I'm sitting here trying to figure out the logistics of dumping ice into the cooler during driver swaps, draining the right amount of water out of the cooler, etc, and I started to think that a powered cooler might be a better way of keeping the system working with minimal work.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Koolatron-P20 … er/9607022
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Wagan-7-Liter … mp;veh=cse

Has anybody tried one of these?  Filled with water, would they keep up with keeping the driver cool on a hot day?  Preloaded with ice?  Anybody?  Anybody?

Thx,

bs

  • Registered: 2009-05-04
  • Posts: 287

Re: Cool suit cooler

Most of those use a Peltier device for cooling and it wouldn't be able to keep up at all IMO.  Besides, it only lowers temps 40F below ambient when everything's working right and that's not as big of a difference as it may sound.

We use the standard homemade cooler with Wal Mart bilge pump in it.  Pumping 30-35F water to the driver is a lot more friendly than 50-60F water, and you're going to have some heat transfer in the lines before it gets there.

We mounted the coolers in the trunks on our cars and just add more ice when we pit.  Any spillage goes into the trunk and runs out through the holes in the floor.

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  • Registered: 2010-04-07
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Re: Cool suit cooler

We fill gallon freezer bags with water and freeze them. We put in two at the beggining of race. At each driver change (1hr 45min), we pull out the bag of water and throw in a fresh one. Usually we only need to change one each time, bacause theres still ice in the other. This way there is no overflow of water because your taking out the same amount your putting in each bag.

To keep all of our ice cold, up to and through the entire race, we use dry ice. This way the ice is actually colder then ice you would get out of your freezer, something like -5 to -10degrees, instead of 25-30degrees. Depending on your freezer. Last race I had 20 gallon blocks of ice in a cooler for 3 days, and at the end of the race threw away about half of them because they didnt get used.

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Re: Cool suit cooler

We just throw a 16# block of ice into the coolsuit cooler and let the water overflow into an overflow.  The overflow "box" then has holes that drip out under the car.

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  • From: dahntahn
  • Registered: 2012-06-21
  • Posts: 11

Re: Cool suit cooler

SoFlacrapcan wrote:

We fill gallon freezer bags with water and freeze them. We put in two at the beggining of race. At each driver change (1hr 45min), we pull out the bag of water and throw in a fresh one. Usually we only need to change one each time, bacause theres still ice in the other. This way there is no overflow of water because your taking out the same amount your putting in each bag.

To keep all of our ice cold, up to and through the entire race, we use dry ice. This way the ice is actually colder then ice you would get out of your freezer, something like -5 to -10degrees, instead of 25-30degrees. Depending on your freezer. Last race I had 20 gallon blocks of ice in a cooler for 3 days, and at the end of the race threw away about half of them because they didnt get used.

I'm not surprised that racers from South Florida have developed such a bulletproof method to keeping cool. wink

I'd rather go to hell than SoFla in the middle of summer.

  • Registered: 2009-09-02
  • Posts: 25

Re: Cool suit cooler

SoFlacrapcan wrote:

We fill gallon freezer bags with water and freeze them. We put in two at the beggining of race. At each driver change (1hr 45min), we pull out the bag of water and throw in a fresh one. Usually we only need to change one each time, bacause theres still ice in the other. This way there is no overflow of water because your taking out the same amount your putting in each bag.

To keep all of our ice cold, up to and through the entire race, we use dry ice. This way the ice is actually colder then ice you would get out of your freezer, something like -5 to -10degrees, instead of 25-30degrees. Depending on your freezer. Last race I had 20 gallon blocks of ice in a cooler for 3 days, and at the end of the race threw away about half of them because they didnt get used.

We do something similar but a little fancier smile  We keep a bunch of water-filled 2qt juice bottles frozen that get swapped at each driver change.  They last about 2.5 hours.  Now we have a mini-freezer in our trailer that they all live in.  We use an Oscar cooler with a medical cold pack pump glued in the bottom (can get these on craigslist for cheap from people who had knee surgery and such) and homemade shirts.

I think the most expensive part of the system was the dry-break connectors.

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Re: Cool suit cooler

Be careful with your overflow and run off...

I saw a car get black flagged... twice at Summit point for this as the thought was it was fuel as it was running out right under the gas cap. Bad move yo!

Downside was that the car had just been in the pits, added ice and did not take out water and had a little fuel on the side of the car after filling up. As such the car when you sniffed it smelled like gas. The judges HAD to consider that it was gas and rightly so but the downside is that a team who was trying to lap as efficiently as possible ended up with a pretty good sized headache.

Our cooler worked better than our home made shirts. The guy with the store bought shirt was cool as could be and the dudes with home made pinched off flow and got hot. We did blow up our LED dimmer switch but thank goodness it defaulted to full on and not off when it went.

We will be looking to upgrade the system for easy removal as well as looking for a source for dry ice as I want to be able to store large mega cold blocks for use as above at our next race.

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Re: Cool suit cooler

RobL wrote:

We just throw a 16# block of ice into the coolsuit cooler and let the water overflow into an overflow.  The overflow "box" then has holes that drip out under the car.

The block of ice is a stunning display of efficiency in this example. If you can find it, use it.

As this forum aptly shows, there are about a thousand ways to skin this cat. Here's ours:

We simply built 2 identical coolers because we haven't had great luck with finding block ice and typically have to use bagged ice. Just prior to the driver change, we fill one cooler most of the way with ice, then add water. At the pit stop, we just remove one cooler and install the other one. We have a built space for the cooler in the passenger seat area of the car, and then strap it down tight with a ratchet strap so that it won't go anywhere. We find that replacing the entire cooler is faster than replacing the ice/water mix and then we don't have any overflow/fluid dump issues. Bilge pumps and coolers and trailer wiring connectors are pretty cheap, the only expensive part is the dry breaks that you epoxy through the cooler shell to connect to the line to the driver. Cheers & good luck.

Pat Mulry, TARP Racing '67 SIMCA GLS 1000
"The SIMCA 1000 rear engined saloon is not a car which is going to be remembered in years to come for any particular reason.... It is not startling for its beauty, innovating with its design or particularly fast, economic or comfortable. However, it has been successful for SIMCA, especially in France."
--SIMCA 1000 Owners Workshop Manual, J.H. Haynes, 1973
  • Registered: 2009-05-04
  • Posts: 287

Re: Cool suit cooler

Bill tried to get really ingenious with ours and left the whole cooler outside all winter.  Found out the pump didn't like being part of the block of ice, though...so that didn't work.

My main concern with the block of ice would be it whacking against the pump.  I guess you could build a partition to protect the pump...

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  • Registered: 2009-10-06
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Re: Cool suit cooler

Thanks All.

This is really helpful.  I'll save my money on the powered cooler and invest in ice instead.

I've also got some of those freezer packs lying around, sounds like swapping some of those in and out might be a possible solution as well.

It's looking to be in the mid 90's at Buttonwillow the weekend after next.  Hopefully the track cools down in the evening and we won't need to worry about this for half of the racing hours.

bs

11 Reply by fleming95 (edited by fleming95 2012-06-22 04:45 PM)

  • Registered: 2009-06-10
  • Posts: 196

Re: Cool suit cooler

bshorey wrote:

Thanks All.

This is really helpful.  I'll save my money on the powered cooler and invest in ice instead.

I've also got some of those freezer packs lying around, sounds like swapping some of those in and out might be a possible solution as well.

It's looking to be in the mid 90's at Buttonwillow the weekend after next.  Hopefully the track cools down in the evening and we won't need to worry about this for half of the racing hours.

bs

Looks like awesome weather now - mid 80's!

But mid 90's next weekend might be a bit optimistic:

Saturday
Clear. High of 102F. Winds from the NNW at 5 to 10 mph.

Saturday Night
Clear. Low of 70F. Winds from the NW at 5 to 10 mph.

Sunday
Clear. High of 106F. Winds from the NW at 5 to 10 mph.

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  • From: Bloomington, IN
  • Registered: 2009-08-14
  • Posts: 1,152

Re: Cool suit cooler

We will be using the block ice trick next time.  But all I have to say is this was by far the best thing we have done to our car in a very long time.  All of my drivers got out of the car feeling much better than previous.  However you make it work, it really is worth every penny.

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  • RobL
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Re: Cool suit cooler

I have a big freezer and bought big tupperware containers (2) that were the size of the coolsuit cooler.  I then spent a couple of weeks making ice blocks.

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  • Sonic
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Re: Cool suit cooler

I have one of those powered coolers.  It doesn't work for $hit.  Don't waste your money.

For our home made coolshirt coolers, we just use whatever ice we can find.  I agree that blocks are best.  I haven't made them in the ziplocks, but that is a good idea.  Usuallly we just freeze 2 liter bottles or milk jugs, or I take a small box with a plastic bag in it and freeze that. The cube ice just melts too quickly, usually.

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  • From: Houston, TX
  • Registered: 2011-05-13
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Re: Cool suit cooler

With a 25 qt cooler, even in Texas heat I've never seen our cube ice all melt (from a full cooler) in a two-hour stint.

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  • From: St Louis
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Re: Cool suit cooler

Attaches to a 12 V cigarette lighter, would be big enough to cool enough of the seat to make a difference.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. … gMethod=rr

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  • From: Columbus, OH
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Re: Cool suit cooler

Brett85p wrote:

Attaches to a 12 V cigarette lighter, would be big enough to cool enough of the seat to make a difference.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. … gMethod=rr

That's not going to do anything, honestly.

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Re: Cool suit cooler

Chris at UltraChiller is having a sale today and tomorrow (July 3-4) on their gear.  Everything is on sale and shirts are $75 (reg: $89).  He's now also selling McMaster Carr connector kits that work with the shirts.  They are not the dry-break variety, but do have some type of pinch device.  He's selling 'em at basically what it would cost you from McM C, so no big savings, but you'll get the correct sized connectors the first time!

http://www.ultrachiller.com/catalog/

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  • Registered: 2009-10-06
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Re: Cool suit cooler

DC Doug wrote:

Chris at UltraChiller is having a sale today and tomorrow (July 3-4) on their gear.  Everything is on sale and shirts are $75 (reg: $89).  He's now also selling McMaster Carr connector kits that work with the shirts.  They are not the dry-break variety, but do have some type of pinch device.  He's selling 'em at basically what it would cost you from McM C, so no big savings, but you'll get the correct sized connectors the first time!

http://www.ultrachiller.com/catalog/

Btw, am I the only one who's thinking of hooking up one of these systems in the paddock?  During the sunlight hours, our car was the coolest place to be.  One of these with a few connectors and 6-10 foot hoses...

bs

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Re: Cool suit cooler

Thanks for the heads-up on that sale. I have 2 drivers in need of these and that's a sweet price. Cheers!

Pat Mulry, TARP Racing '67 SIMCA GLS 1000
"The SIMCA 1000 rear engined saloon is not a car which is going to be remembered in years to come for any particular reason.... It is not startling for its beauty, innovating with its design or particularly fast, economic or comfortable. However, it has been successful for SIMCA, especially in France."
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Re: Cool suit cooler

Our system worked great. It was effective on track and quick and easy and no mess swapping the frozen bottles of water we used to cool the pumped water.

Search and you'll find last year's threads on this. Many great ideas. That's were I got all mine.

In the end the trick was making an insert that held the hoses against the seat. I glued them to some stiff stuff I got at a fabric store then covered that with black burlap. It almost looked like something Kirkey had built into the seat. I saw another team's solution and it was to hand stitch the hose to the seat cover. Zip ties would probably have worked, too.

We brought a cooler full of frozen water bottles all packed in party ice. Most of them made it to sunset on Saturday. We had arrived on Thursday night. Next year I'll put dry ice in the bottom of the cooler then pack everything in party ice.

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Re: Cool suit cooler

bshorey wrote:

Btw, am I the only one who's thinking of hooking up one of these systems in the paddock?  During the sunlight hours, our car was the coolest place to be.  One of these with a few connectors and 6-10 foot hoses...

bs

No, you're not.  We rigged up a cooler on the Bar Stool Kart of Death last year and one in the pits at Summit.  Easy and awesome.  What I want to see is some team drilling six connections into one of those coffin coolers for the pits.  Cool everyone, I say!

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23 Reply by cpchampion (edited by cpchampion 2012-07-05 09:44 AM)

  • From: Houston TX
  • Registered: 2009-10-06
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Re: Cool suit cooler

DC Doug wrote:
bshorey wrote:

Btw, am I the only one who's thinking of hooking up one of these systems in the paddock?  During the sunlight hours, our car was the coolest place to be.  One of these with a few connectors and 6-10 foot hoses...

bs

No, you're not.  We rigged up a cooler on the Bar Stool Kart of Death last year and one in the pits at Summit.  Easy and awesome.  What I want to see is some team drilling six connections into one of those coffin coolers for the pits.  Cool everyone, I say!

Yes, we've been there-- looking forward to getting into the car for the sweet cooling of the cool-shirt system. At one Louisiana race, I went portable with a backpack rig for the cool-shirt. McMaster-Carr fittings & tubes, tiny 12V submersible pump, 2 lantern batteries.
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