glowing turbo...

[CarPsyco84]

yeah, i just got off the freeway, and went to this gas station and went to pull out some cash, right, and for some reason I decided to pop my hood, and when I did, I imediatly noticed that my turbo and exhaust manifold was glowing... pretty normal after I beat on it, but not for just cruzin at 70mph... I don't have any shields on the exhaust either, cause iv'e been to lazy to put them on... I've hacked my lower honey comb in my MAF... should I be worrying about this much heat?

[dylan]

Yeah that is definatly a bad sign.

[john]

Glowing???? BS. That would mean that it is close to melting temp. I would not worry as I have never heard of a turbo or manifold melting. You would have to worry about the aluminum head melting first. Throwing the heat shields on will just "hide" the "glowing" from you and make the turbo and mani hotter by keeping the heat in. It is a good idea to throw them on as may have a small affect on your intake temps.

[Matt D.]

Glowing???? BS. That would mean that it is close to melting temp. I would not worry as I have never heard of a turbo or manifold melting. You would have to worry about the aluminum head melting first. Throwing the heat shields on will just "hide" the "glowing" from you and make the turbo and mani hotter by keeping the heat in. It is a good idea to throw them on as may have a small affect on your intake temps.
You've never seen a turbo and manifold glow? Bahaha... Yeah, they're going to melt, sag and fall right off the car!

[TheBlizzard]

Glowing???? BS. That would mean that it is close to melting temp.
You have never seen a manifold glow before? I have seen this numerous times at night after hammering on my car before I parked it and popping the hood. Just go out and do a WOT 2nd and 3rd gear pull at night, then stop and pop the hood, your manifold will be nice and red.

But what I think he is getting at is the reason why it is glowing after cruising at highway speeds and not being under heavy load. Your EGTs must be really high or something because your manifold shouldn't be glowing just driving around.

What are your mods by the way? This will help find you why this is happening.

CRAIG

[Anduinlight]

Glowing???? Throwing the heat shields on will just "hide" the "glowing" from you and make the turbo and mani hotter by keeping the heat in. It is a good idea to throw them on as may have a small affect on your intake temps.
I though that the heat shields were fairly good at dissipating the heat around the manifold.

[SuperSleeper]

The heat shields are exactly that... they protect their surroundings from being directly exposed. That doesn't mean that the heat just vanishes though... it has to go somewhere.

I've seen manifolds glow before... and I imagine the turbine housing can glow with not much more work. But I have a hard time believing the compressor housing was glowing. You didn't mean the ENTIRE turbo was glowing, did you?

Either way, something must be wrong if it's happening without much effort. I'd get an EGT gauge to monitor it. Might be being caused by a bad air/fuel mixture.

[CarPsyco84]

yeah, the whole cast iron part is what glows, mostly right around where the 4 single headers converge into the turbo, and then the exhaust side of the turbo... its not like SUPER RED GONNA MELT OFF, but its definatly cherry red, in the middle. Seems excessively hot to me, considering I wasn't beating on it, I wish i could afford a EGT gauge, but alas, my galant VR4 tranny I am getting saturday is slightly more important right now. as for how modifyed my car is, I have a 2.75" peiece of pipe bolted to my O2 houseing and i've ported the turbine housing and O2 housing SOME, not all that huge, the biggest thing i guess is that I a 2g manifold and after I took it home I realized it was ported for a big 16G, (7cm opening) so I ported my 14b to match it, other than that, nothin, it runs good, stock computer, no SAFC, I've turned up the boost some, but I didn't think that applied cause I wasn't boosting at the time, and I don't have a CNEL light either,

[JET]

Glowing???? BS. That would mean that it is close to melting temp. I would not worry as I have never heard of a turbo or manifold melting. You would have to worry about the aluminum head melting first. Throwing the heat shields on will just "hide" the "glowing" from you and make the turbo and mani hotter by keeping the heat in. It is a good idea to throw them on as may have a small affect on your intake temps.
Hahahaaa!! That's awesome!! HORT's tech guy at his finest :D

Do you realize that most material will glow at the same temperature? Red hot cast iron will be the same temperature as red hot stainless (if they are the same red). It doesn't have anything to do with their melting temperature.

It is pretty common to see the manifold glowing after cruising on the highway. Most people do some in town driving after they come off the highway and that helps to cool it down. I wouldn't worry about it a lot with a mitsu turbo, they do fine for a long time on people's cars that don't even know what the turbo looks like.

[ABV]

If you want to see something really cool, dump a big glass of water onto a glowing red turbo. :D







*disclaimer* Don't actually do that. ;)