Re: Spiral HE's?

[Toby Erkson <air_cooled_nut@pobox.com>]

<x-flowed>I understand that spiraled fins would produce more surface area, 
however, it would add more material to the already heavy HE.  It would 
also create more resistance to the air flow.  Appropriate tooling would 
likely be more spendy and/or complex for a vehicle that is supposed to 
be more affordable than most.  I'm not an automotive engineer so I could 
be way off, I'll admit, but it seems like too much work...ESPECIALLY if 
it was an after-market item.

David, are you sure that the fins simply aren't bent?  How far into the 
exchanger can you see the spiral (sorry but the pictures don't show me 
anything)?  Are there any indications that the HE was opened up and 
modified i.e. it's a one-off, custom item?  I think you need to hang 
that carcass and gut it :-)  Such a discovery is very interesting and 
we're all curious so we just want to know more, that's all.  Imagine 
what THAT would go for on eBay  LOL!

   Toby Erkson  --  air_cooled_nut@pobox.com
   '72 VW Squareback, '95 VW Jetta, '81 Gold Wing, '73 Porsche 914
   http://www.icbm.org/
   Portland, Oregon



Constantino Tobio wrote:

> Hmm. I would imagine that the logic behind spiraling the heat sinks is
> that it makes the effective distance that the air passing over there
> longer, thus heating up the air more because it's traveling over the
> HE for a longer time...
>
> It's not a bad idea, actually. I'm surprised VW didn't do that all the
> time. I don't see an obvious disadvantage. Maybe cooling the exhaust
> too much on leaving the engine is bad? I don't know.
>  

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