Powder Coating (Page 1 of 2)

My guess would be that whatever you spend is counted.  If you buy a kit and use $10 worth of powder than you add $10.  If you send it out, then the whole total is added.  I have to ask though.  What in the HELL needs to be powder coated on a Lemons car??? 

Smokey would be sad that you asked the question.

Well that's the obvious answer...

The Schumacher Taxi Service has now had 7 entrants in 4 races. 
Here is a list of major failures we had:

Fuel leak out of our charcoal canister
broken lug stud x3
exhaust problem x4
blown coolant system x3
headgasket x2
wheel bearing
hard clutch line cracked
stuck brake caliper
car rolled

Everything dies faster due to heat. As you listed:

Head gaskets due to increased heat retention in the head and block from higher RPM running and increased pressure due to heat. Or uneven metal expansion due to a shitty thermostat and different alloy mixture in the head and block.

Clutch material weakens with increased heat retnetion and the friction material will become hard and brittle.

Brake pads and fluid designed for ~400 degrees are now seeing ~500-600+

Radiators doing their best to extract heat but failing due to minimal cooling surface area, high pressures, engine bay turbulence and radiant heat from the 1200 degree exhaust manifold two inches from it.

Wheel bearings metal degredation over time is accelerated due to increased load and unload causing greater friction and... HEAT...

You see... even crap cars can be made to last if the HEAT can be dealt with properly.

Over-engineering sure... I just know what fails with the cars I have built and worked on.

No reason to get worked up over a simple question. Besides.. if I invest in ceramic coating items that means less money for the items you see as important.

Wouldn't that mean that you now have the advantage?

I wonder if the judges will get suspicious if they start seeing powder coated surfaces. I've always suspected that if you show up with even one Aeroquip fitting they'd start getting feisty, but maybe I'm just overly cautious.

With a whopping 160 "claimed" HP this car isn't going to be a speed demon. We are simply eliminating potential problems before having to deal with said problems.

And yes... I do over-think things. I am also a post whore if you haven't noticed. I blame my ADHD which blames the 9 shots the military gave me and I haven't been the same since.

:D:D:D:D

Riktor is this your first Lemons event?  I assume so, but you know what they say about assuming.  All of these guys are right...it's an endurance race where a $1 hose clamp or something really cheap, and stupid easy to fix (had you caught it early) will end your day.   

This will be my 3rd Lemons event at CMP in a few weeks, so I've been there, done that so to speak.  The first event my team and I had no clue what to expect since all we had ever done was countless HPDE events.  The slower cars who seemed to be out there just 'making laps' were kicking our butts...even though we could pass them in reverse it seemed.  The reason was we drove like mad, got penalties and spent to much time on pit stops.  Our 'performance' mods consisted of good brake pads, cut springs, and lots of negative camber up front....but...we finished 27th.

Fast forward one year, the car (E30 325e) was the exactly the same + one dent from the first race.  New strategy...stay on the track and out of trouble, don't pit unless you have to.  We were not the fastest or the slowest, but we made lots of laps and got zero penalties.  We didn't break anything thus no wrenching on the car and the result...we won.

The moral of the story...make the car last and don't worry about making it fast.  Check all the little things (clamps, hose, belts, etc.) to be sure the car is sound.  Powdercoating will likely gain you penalty laps instead of the advantage you are seeking.

I've seen penalty laps just for cleaning an engine bay let alone powdercoating it.

Jebus.

Is this a a troll or I have just been on the internets too long?

The proper type of ceramic compound will reflect heat and does not allow heat transfer, or rather minimizes it.

When a shop i used to work at first dabbled into the powder coating realm we took a base 1985 Firebird with a 305. Ran it up and down the street until everything was at operating temperature. I can't remember the exact numbers but the the under hood temps were some where around 300 degrees with the exhaust manifolds nearing 800.

We disassembled the engine and cermic coated the pistons, exhaust and intake runners on both the heads and intake manifold. We also ceramic coated the interior and exterior of the manifolds. Under hood temps dropped below 200 and the manifolds were near 400 i believe.

Like I said, this was a few years ago and I no longer have the article I wrote about the experiment. But those numbers first come to mind.

Besides from my understanding... detailed picture taking of the entire fabrication process is accepted as proper documentation. Otherwise our $10 intake and exhaust manifolds are going to doom us.

LOL!  I thought so too.  I had a huge binder with tons of pics, reciepts, and other documentation for our E30.  They didn't even bother to look at the details, but took one look at the binder and said I must be trying to hide something if I was that well prepared and just gave us 70 laps. 

-Scott