Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Driver Cooling Systems + Let's build a DIY Cooler!

Collapse
X
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Driver Cooling Systems + Let's build a DIY Cooler!

    Driving a car on track can be taxing, and in warmer months and in warmer cars, it can overheat your body. We sometimes poke fun at these in-car issues, but they are real. Some track drivers have to deal with more heat than others, and we have seen many racers in hotter climates skip events in the Summer months. I made the meme below to counter act this "take summers off!" thinking for Texas racers.



    Many of you reading this are track junkies who, like us here in Texas, live in climates that can get hot enough to become too taxing to the human body in road course racing. So let's talk about our absolute FAVORITE way to stay cool in a track car - with ICE WATER running through a vest or shirt!

    CRYOTHERAPY FOR MOTORSPORTS

    Cryotherapy, also known as cold therapy, is the local use of low temperatures in medical therapy. Cryotherapy may be used to treat a variety of tissue, joint or muscle problems - especially post surgery. This usually involves some sort of wrapping around a part of the body with cold water pumped through to affect tissues in a localized area. These medical devices were eventually applied to Motorsports to create "driver cooling" systems.



    These are used in a race car (or in the racing pits, as shown above with a portable system) to keep a driver's core body temperature cooler. Very cold water is pumped through a shirt (usually) with capillary tubes, and that cools the blood in your chest - the internal cooling system of the human body. That makes the blood going to your muscles and BRAIN cooler, which reduces fatigue, promotes better driver reactions, allows a wider range of view (perception), and less chance of getting heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

    And while many of the track regulars like to brag about the heat not affecting them... as you step up your safety game and start wearing a 2-3 layer fire suit, and/or as your track car becomes more of a gutted race car (with no insulation at the firewall or floor to hot things nearby), getting overheated can become a real issue.



    Which is why this post is in our "safety gear" section of our forum - because at a certain point, this becomes a safety concern. But for those more competitive folks, it DOES help mental acuity, and can make you drive faster and more reliably. It's a driving hack that anyone can exploit!

    JUST RUN YOUR CAR'S A/C? NOPE

    Some of you reading this that have never done a track event might think, why can't I just turn on my air conditioner while driving on track? While these systems works great at keeping the interior of your car cool while driving on the street in even the hottest climates, it does not work well when driving on track.



    Almost all modern cars have an automated shut-off for the air conditioning compressor when you mash the throttle wide open. This is a safety feature common on all internal combustion engines since the 1990s, to keep abrupt changes in engine RPM from destroying the electro-magnetic clutch that is used to engage and disengage the compressor.

    Most track drivers on most tracks are driving at at Wide Open Throttle for 50-70% of a lap, so the air con is turned off most of the time. Also, to be effective even in those 30-50% of the time periods on track where it could kick on and cool, the windows would have to be up. Strangely enough, some IMSA pro / GT series where OEM air con is used, to keep the drivers cool. They mandate that the cars MUST run the air con on and windows up. Again, this is the exception and not the rule.

    WINDOWS DOWN ON TRACK

    Driving on track with your windows up and the A/C blasting doesn't work for most of us, as we have to run windows down at any HPDE, W2W, or Time Trial that I know of. That allows the drivers to give clear point-bys (sticking your arm out thew window to point another driver by).



    Windows down running also gives corner workers better access if a driver is in an incident, and stuck inside the car or otherwise incapacitated. In rare cases some HPDE groups allow windows up, but only if it is raining HARD, and you have turn signals to communicate point by signals.

    With the windows down, running the A/C does almost nothing. Test it yourself - drive around on a hot summer day with your windows down and and the air con blowing on max - it does almost nothing once you are above speeds of about 10 mph. And for some of us, the air con was ditched in our race cars long ago, for weight savings and better engine cooling.

    ENDURANCE RACING

    In 2011 during my first endurance racing event running in Texas, everyone else on the team had a cool shirt except me. I was cocky and said I didn't care, but after a 2 hour stint, I felt like trash. In another endurance event later that same year with another team, they didn't have a driver cooling system in the car at all. I did a 2:45 hour stint that time and was definitely "not 100%" at the end of that stint.



    In both of those endurance races I lost close to 8 pounds each day driving in a single 2 hour stint. Dangerous levels of dehydration occur when you sweat that much for that long. Nowadays almost ALL teams running warm weather endurance events run driver cooling systems, and every driver has a vest or shirt. The hoses poke through the bottom of the fire suit zipper, as shown above right. Hey, don't make it weird!



    Last anecdote and we can start building a cooler. My wife Amy started running more Texas summer Time Trial events in 2023, matching my crazy 30 event per year schedule. And in Texas, the June-July-August events can be pretty brutal, with ambient temps touching 100 degrees on many days. Even skipping running our (optional in Time Trial) fire suits at these events, we were both still getting wiped out from the heat.



    I started using a cool suit regularly in 2021, and my only regret was not doing it sooner. The costs for the ice chest based systems are relatively low, especially compared to a trip to the Emergency Room from heat exhaustion. In the last few years we have seen med tech companies showing up a track events to do Hydration Therapy, where they put an IV into your arm and replenish a driver's fluids with a bag of water, electrolytes and other goodies. And while this is a great fix for people that have gotten too hot and dehydrated, it isn't cheap. I'd prefer to stay cool while driving with about $500-700 worth of cool shirt parts and not need the IV treatment after.




    When I started using a cool suit system at these Time Trial events, we found these new "cool vests", which are just like cool shirts with capillary tubes sewn in, but a zipper down the front. These are MUCH easier to put on and remove, and we often leave them hooked up in the car and just slip it on right as we hop into the car (unless we are wearing a fire suit, then it has to go on outside of the car). Taking a tight fitting cool shirt off is a lot of work, because the tubes sewn into the shirt make it less flexible and harder to get off.



    Once you have a driver cooling system in your car, and you have the hoses hooked up, you just flip the switch to pump ice cold water through your cool shirt or vests, and WOW! You can instantly feel it. You drive better with your core temps under control AND you aren't totally wiped out the next day recovering. We have made laps wearing these cooling systems with ambient temps of 105F and higher, and the only thing that suffered were the tires. We will talk about different types of systems, how to mount them, and how they work

    ICE WATER VS "ICELESS" DRIVER COOLING SYSTEMS

    There are two main methods of driver cooling with water shirts and vests. One is an ice chest with a pump inside, and you dump ice and water into it. The other is a mini air conditioner, which has a lot more costs and other "needs" that the ice chest systems do not. Both systems send the cold water through your cool shirt. I won't get into helmet air coolers, which is another option but even more complicated and spendy.



    There are Pros and Cons to each, which we will cover below. Just know that one system costs much more than the other, and has many more downsides...

    ICE CHEST COOLERS

    The simplest, most reliable, and most cost effective driver cooling system is an ice chest based system. These are simple enough that a child can use them - you drop in a bag of ice, poke a few holes in the bag, then add some water to the cooler. When you have it all connected, an internal pump pushes ice cold water (as long as there is any ice left, it stays right at 32F) through hoses into your shirt or vest. For anyone running under 2 hour driving stints, this is almost always the solution.




    The ice water runs next to your "core" - your chest and back, from neck to waist. This is where your heart, lungs and a lot of your blood runs. Your blood not only feeds oxygen to your cells, it can cool down your organs, muscles and brain. And an overheated brain will mess you up fast.

    These are typically made with a 13 or 19 quart sized cooler, which are relatively easy to package in just about any race car, but there are now even smaller cylindrical systems out as well. We tend to use the 19 quart systems and mount them in the trunk. The typical systems are sold with a tray that is hard mounted to the chassis with Velcro straps that secure the ice chest into that.

    This style of tray mounted / strapped cooler leaves the top able to be unlatched and ice bags swapped out without removing the whole cooler. This means you can leave the pump wiring and hoses connected while swapping out bags between stints. These have evolved, and earlier systems were not this easy to use - you did have to pull the ice chest out each time to get the lid opened.



    It is really hard to argue against these ice chest based systems unless you are doing much longer 2+ hour endurance racing stints or multiple drivers over 7-24 hours. We have still seen some teams use a 20 pound BLOCK of ice, which lasts longer than the 7-10 pound bags of ice cubes, but it always eventually melts. The pros are much lower cost (around $320 for an off-the-shelf ice chest based system), lower amperage draw (just a simple low amperage pump), and overall simplicity and reliability.

    The other "cons" with these are the "on / off" nature of how these pumps work. As long as there is still ice in the cooler, the water is literally ice cold, and that can be jarring. Some driver's just deal with it and will switch the pump on and off as they have any free "brain cycles" during a racing stint. Make sure to keep the pump switch within reach!



    Of course there are flow controller options for the pumps, which can help the driver dial in the coolness. This is a very handy upgrade if you can stomach the extra cost (this single flow control knob + panel is $230 from Coolshirt). The added costs for this knob seem a bit much. After all, this isn't some pulse width modulated fuel pump controller "high tech" device, it is a simple $5 rheostat. Look for a follow up post showing some lower cost hacks to make this work on a budget.



    Pro Tip: If you add a flow control knob, put that near the driver, possibly even out of sight but just behind the shifter (see above left), or nearby on the dash. When you use one of these systems with a flow controller you will ONLY want to use them like this. You can dial in the cool and not have that frigid ice water at full pressure. The iceless systems also have a temp setting they shoot for, which keeps you from fiddling with switches and knobs.



    The other "con" to an ice chest based system is you keep having to swap out bags of ice, and scoop out the extra water (from the melted ice) when the bags have to be replaced. Not a big deal for HPDE or Time Trial use. Even Club Racing W2W stints of 20-45 minutes tend never to "run out of ice". The only time it is an issue is at long endurance events that do not have mandated pit stops. But if you have any ice left in the cooler at the end of the day, you can use it to chill your adult beverages!

    ICELESS SYSTEMS

    Endurance racers (7+ hour events) usually run an ice chest based system out of ice in every driver stint, and some will spend the extra money on a mini air conditioner system. Again, these are based on small, portable, medical cryotherapy systems. And for some endurance teams it can be worth the extra cost and hassles.



    These iceless systems are self contained air conditioning systems, which are very small and cool the liquid that circulates through your shirt in a closed loop coolant system. One of the main downsides with these systems is they dump waste heat into whatever area that you mount it into - be it the cabin or trunk.Trunk wouldn't be so bad, but it then heats up the whole area around the iceless system.



    We didn't have room in the trunk of our LS550 Mustang shown here, so we mounted it in the back seat area. Since it has some heft when filled with water, we didn't want it flying around in a crash, so we made a very sturdy bracket for mounting it. This first iteration was taking in cabin air to cool the evaporation core of the internal air conditioner, and dumping waste heat back into the cabin. We ran it like this for a couple of events but it was not extremely effective - as the cabin got hotter, the cooler worked worse and worse.



    The owner of the company that supplied this iceless cooler to us strongly suggested venting in cool outside air to the inlet side of the unit. We opened up the unit and found the best place to add this dual 3" plastic duct, and then brought in fresh air from outside the cabin with another identical dual 3" inlet duct mounted as a scoop at the B-pillar of the car, just behind the right side door window opening. That worked a lot better.



    This fresh air routing took in cooler outside air, but we still had the waste heat dumping into the cabin. Venting the exhaust from this unit outside the cabin would have added even more efficiency, but things started getting a little too complex for this Time Trial car.



    There were some other small issues. These iceless units hold a VERY small amount of water, and each time you disconnect the quick-connect hoses on your cool shirt, a little bit spills out. It didn't take too many times before the water level inside the unit dropped enough to put it into "not working" status. Where we had it mounted it was difficult to check and refill the water levels, compounding our issues.

    continued below
    Last edited by Fair!; 07-25-2024, 05:40 PM.
    Terry Fair - www.vorshlag.com
    2018 GT / S550 Dev + 2013 FR-S / 86 Dev + 2011 GT / S197 Dev + C4 Corvette Dev
    EVO X Dev + 2007 Z06 / C6 Dev + BMW E46 Dev + C5 Corvette Dev

  • #2
    continued from above

    Also, even when topped off and working at full tilt, the water never got below about 50F. That still really helps the driver, who's body is usually cooking at 98.6 degrees. My main issues is that ice chest style coolers keep the water at 32F until most of the ice melts. The difference in driver cooling with 32F vs 50F water is not small.

    Again, we could have expended a lot more fabrication time and hacked more holes in the car to try to extract heat better, but we decided to pull the unit for an ice chest cooler - which are so simple, have less power draw, and none of the waste heat / air routing problems of a mini-air conditioner. Your results may vary, but for about 1/8th the cost of an iceless system, the super simple ice chest style coolers are hard to beat.

    MOUNTING YOUR ICE CHEST COOLER

    Let's say you have decided to get an ice chest driver cooling system. If you are buying an off-the-shelf solution, bravo! You value your time more than some. These come very well built and they make them easy to install with well made mounting trays, bespoke velcro strap systems, easy-to-use quick connect lines, and of course shirts and vests.



    Ideally we like to mount these in a trunk area, which usually has plenty of room for even the larger 19 qt systems. An easy to open trunk allows great access to the ice chest, for access to add ice and water. In a hatchback car (see below), there's usually room behind the driver to mount this as well.



    In the images above we (foolishly) built a mounting tray for this C6 Corvette. That is more work than you would think - just buy the tray from your driver cooling system supplier. That tray needs to be bolted to the floor with through-bolts. A cooler with 10 pounds of water / ice inside has some mass and you don't want that bouncing around the cabin in a high G impact. Make sure to leave room to access the hoses, the latches to open the top, and put it close enough to the edge of the trunk/hatch opening to lift the entire cooler out full of water, to dump it out after each event.

    MAKING YOUR OWN TRAY?

    If you really do NOT value your own time, and have the fab tools to make the tray, here are a couple that we made. Again, I would NOT recommend this, with as cheap as these cost to buy!



    In the example above, I wanted to "show off" and make something lighter than what the normal driver cooling companies offer. We used .080" thick aluminum, CNC plasma cut the outer shape, bent it up with a box and pan brake, then added dimple dies and TIG welded the seams. Then we got it powder coated!



    And it was lighter than the Coolshirt.com version, by a whopping 0.6 pounds - which is a trivial amount for as much work as this one took. What a silly waste of time! Don't make your own tray - you still want to use their Velcro straps in any case.



    This one above we made due to a time constraint - our normal supplier was out of business for a couple of months, so we had to put something together in a short time frame. This one was CNC plasma cut from .100" thick aluminum sheet, then bent up and not welded at the corners (like our old supplier used to make them). This thicker material holds its shape better and has worked well.



    The pictures above and below here are from our 2023 BRZ, which we didn't want to drill holes into. The trunk has a spare tire well, as do most cars, but it was very much not flat. I had an idea of mounting to the big protrusion that a spare tire would mount to plus a few more threaded holes at the back of the trunk floor. So our shop manager Brad made this aluminum tray to mount to those spots. Simple .080" thick aluminum with holes for that center mounting tower and a lip at the back to grab the existing threaded holes in the back wall of the trunk.



    This simple tray was bolted in place and it had four holes to mount the ice chest tray to, which worked perfectly. When we went to sell the car we made this an "optional add on", and could have removed the cooler, tray, and our trunk adapter tray in minutes. The buyer wanted this optional cooler setup, so it all stayed in place.

    WIRING UP THE PUMP / MOUNTING THE SWITCH

    This is pretty simple but some folks like to see every step, so we'll show it.



    The pump is a 12V DC bilge pump, and has a very low amperage draw. We ran two 14 ga wires to the trunk, added Weatherpack 2-wire connectors to the cooler, then terminated our wires to an available circuit with the mating connector.



    The system needs a small fuse - a 5amp is probably more than enough, but we tend to put this on a 10 amp circuit. On the 2023 BRZ we tapped into the factory fuse box and added a second 10 amp circuit to an existing, non-critical circuit.



    I like to make the switches in modern cars in hidden yet accessible locations. On the BRZ we put the LED lit switch inside the center console, between the two cup holders. The wires then ran back to the cooler in the trunk under the carpet and back seat. It was easy to reach over and switch the pump on and off while driving, without looking at it.



    The BRZ car had a "hide away" center console cover (above left), so it was easy to drive with this lid in the open position. Our 2006 Corvette (above right) has a big clunky center console lid, so we couldn't easily hide the switch. Instead we put this in front of the shifter an in unused ash tray lid.



    This older car had an actual ash tray - like for someone who smokes in their car?! That is not a common thing anymore. We removed that swiveling lid section of the center stack, modified it so that it no longer opened or had an ash tray. That then became a panel which we added 3 switches and an LED indicator to, as shown above. We did all of this with DTM style connectors, and the Coolshirt switch had an LED to show when it was "on".



    If you are using a flow controller, look at the sections above where we show a few ways we have mounted those. The wiring is pretty simple, and we plan on making some home built versions of these for much less $$.

    WHAT HAPPENED TO COOLSHIRT?

    Vorshlag had been a dealer for Coolshirt since 2014, and in that time we had purchased a number of systems for both shop owned and customer owned race cars. Our last order from them was in 2023, and we had moved all of our systems to this brand - our shirts, coolers, hoses, trays, everything. We even kept some spares of their hoses, trays, and fittings on hand because we had so many shop and customer cars with these systems.



    In early June of 2024 we sent a Purchase Order for a system for our 2024 Darkhorse. We got an automated acknowledgement email from our PO, then weeks went by and nothing. We called and called, left messages, resent emails. They just went... dark.



    We went to social media to try to get some answers, and apparently Coolshirt had gone bankrupt months earlier. The new owners had just left the website on autopilot and only in late July were able to even answer calls. They had no inventory and couldn't meet our deadline (so we built a cooler from scratch - see that section below) but said they should be able to ship some things in August. But... the fittings were all going to change, due to some IP control issues. See, the new owners were a competing supplier (FAST Cooling), and they got the database of customers and deals from Coolshirt, but little else.

    We knew that all of the driver cooling brands (there aren't many!) had been experiencing shortage in production, changes in ownership and many other small issues that customers were not aware of. After doing some investigation we found that a new company was born from Coolshirt, Paragon Pro, and they have all of the same fittings and designs as before, because they owned all of the IP in their systems. When the old owner of Coolshirt ceased business, this one swooped in and started a new division of an existing company to introduce all of their shirts, fittings, coolers, pumps and other suppliers to medical, motorsport, aerospace and other industries.



    All Paragon products are backwards compatible with all Cool Shirt branded products sold prior to April 2024. If you like the Cool Shirt product that you have been getting, then Paragon Pro is the place you can switch to seamlessly. So you can buy one of the Paragon shirts and connect to your Coolshirt cooler. These are basically talking about the same products.

    Now this is a brand new company, so their website is still being filled out, and they don't even have a social media page yet. We will give their brand a test pretty soon and report back.

    continued below
    Terry Fair - www.vorshlag.com
    2018 GT / S550 Dev + 2013 FR-S / 86 Dev + 2011 GT / S197 Dev + C4 Corvette Dev
    EVO X Dev + 2007 Z06 / C6 Dev + BMW E46 Dev + C5 Corvette Dev

    Comment


    • #3
      continued from above

      BUILD YOUR OWN ICE CHEST COOLING SYSTEM

      Finally, the payoff section of this massive post! My hope is that you have gotten this far and read what is posted above, and decided to use a driver cooling system. If you followed my advice it is an ice chest based system, and you will pick one from Paragon Pro or someone similar. The $318 price below is for the most popular size cooler is a stand-alone system (price when I wrote this in July 2024). All you need is the tray, the hoses, and the cool shirt or vest. Keep that price in mind.



      After using a number of these this seems to be the right size. There is a smaller 12 L / 13 quart version, then this 18L / 19 quart version, and some that are much bigger. Just stick with the 19 quart version - trust me.



      If you are reading this section, hopefully you will realize that making your own ice chest based cooling system is not worth it. These are just so cost effective from the retailers, and very reliable. But if you insist on saving a buck, I will show how we made one - which we did in a pinch. One of our old employees wanted to do the DIY thing for a low-buck endurance racecar, and I purchased the parts for about $90 to make the cooler (at the time, now it's $120) and when Coolshirt went out of business for a few months we had to punt and make one.




      This is the 19 quart cooler you need, made by Engel. It comes in many colors, and back when I bought this one (in 2019) it was $52 on Amazon. This Engel unit has the latching lid and the side brackets built in, which are important for strapping it to the mounting tray.



      This is the pump we used - an 1100 gph bilge pump that is about $15 on Amazon. We had to hunt for these quick connect fittings, but found them on a specialty plastics website for $6.55/each. These are the style that fit Coolshirt shirts and hoses until April 2024 and Paragon units from now on. For a fitting to fit hoses from FAST Cooling or Coolshirt after April 2024, you will have to go hunt for those.



      We have a decade of use with these fittings and they work great. I have the hoses and shirts to go with them, too. Making your own hoses or shirts seems pretty tedious, to me. Imagine a leaking hose or shirt while driving - that would be less than ideal!



      I would also suggest buying the tray from Paragon or FAST Cooling to fit the cooler size you are gong with - again, the 18 Liter / 19 quart is the best size, in my view. The smaller ones aren't much if any lighter, and they hold less ice/water.



      To connect the bilge pump outlet to the port in the side of the cooler we used some 1-1/2" ID bilge pump hose from Home Depot. It comes in a 6' long section and is very flexible. We sectioned off a foot of that (it has smooth sections every foot for this purpose) and it installed perfectly onto the bilge pump outlet.



      Now the right way to mount the bilge pump is like what is shown above left. In that picture the blue colored bit is a mounting "Cage" that the pump snaps into (you can see it detached on the above right image). Using some self tapping screws with RTV around the holes, attach the cage at the bottom of the side wall of the cooler, as shown above. We did it wrong - attached to the bottom as shown above right - and it has to be turned sideways like this to prime once the cooler is dry. Silly mistake.



      Aaaaand.... I didn't get pictures while Christian made the rest. He picked up $10 worth of 1-1/2" 90 deg fittings from Tractor Supply and that was about it. It went so fast that by the time I looked up, he was done. Some drilling, some RTV sealant, and he had it wrapped up. Sorry, I will try to get more details on these steps later.



      So we have about $140 in parts to make the cooler and pump setup, and plumbed to the outside for the Coolshirt/Paragon hoses. Again, we made a mounting tray due to time constraints, but for only $98 it is so worth buying one pre-made, unless you can CNC cut the tray at home and make the Velcro straps.

      Just buy the whole kit, trust me!

      Cheers,
      Terry from Vorshlag
      Terry Fair - www.vorshlag.com
      2018 GT / S550 Dev + 2013 FR-S / 86 Dev + 2011 GT / S197 Dev + C4 Corvette Dev
      EVO X Dev + 2007 Z06 / C6 Dev + BMW E46 Dev + C5 Corvette Dev

      Comment


      • #4
        An update with more data - sure, why not?

        In the month since I first wrote this breakdown of ice chest vs "iceless" Driver Cooling Systems we have added another system to another Vorshlag car and run it in THE two hottest Time Attack events of 2024 - the 2015 Mustang shown below we call Trigger.

        TEXAS AUGUST HEAT TESTING WITH PARAGON ICE CHEST SYSTEM

        August events are our hottest of the season here in Texas, and this August was as hot as ever with several high temp records set across the state.



        We can't really "skip" these August events, as we sponsor two series that hold events in this Hell Month, and we are chasing season points in one of those as well (SCCA Time Trial).



        We had a 7 week break between events (by skipping only just one July event in this car) and we took that time to make improvements to both the car's engine cooling system as well as the driver cooling system. The ducted exhaust chimney on the back of the radiator improves front downforce (the primary reason) as well as engine cooling (secondary) - we noted seen a 7-10 degree drop in coolant temps and 5-8 degree drop in oil temps when on track (so much so that we might remove the oil cooler - the thermostat never opens). The Paragon 18 Liter cooler was also a HUGE improvement to driver comfort.



        At an event on August 10th event we saw ambient temps from 90-100F and at an August 17th event (above) we saw 90-104F ambient temps. With the Paragon ice chest style cooler in the car I ran a bag of ice for 2 sessions and having ICE WATER going through my zip-up cool vest for every second of time I was in the car over 2 sessions. It had been since 2022 when I last ran an ice chest style system, as we had an iceless system in this car last year. The difference is DRAMATIC.



        The best cooler temps we ever saw when the iceless system worked was a water temp of 48F, but it was usually in the 50s on hot summer days. This system - like ALL iceless systems - was very sensitive to losing water capacity, which it holds very little of. It got so bad that I would not disconnect my cool vest to avoid losing even a few drops of water. Topping off the system with more water was a huge hassle. We also had to run massive ducting to this to keep the inlet air temps at ambient, rather than pulling from inside the car. That added some drag while racing, too.



        Since writing the first sections in this thread above, we reached out to Paragon Pro driver cooling systems and became a dealer, then bought this ice chest based system and mounting tray plus hoses for Trigger. Our trunk is a too packed and inaccessible, so we bolted the mounting tray to the floor in front of the passenger seat (much easier to access than "behind the racing seats").



        For some racers this location wouldn't work, but for me - who hasn't taken a passenger in over a year - this works. And it worked SO well I didn't want to get out of the car on the August 17th event. Seriously, with 32F ice water flowing through my vest, I was the most comfortable driver on paddock. I won't go back to iceless until many if not most of the downsides are addressed with "newer technology".

        MORE ICELESS SYSTEM DATA

        Earlier this month there was an article on this very subject and it introduced a new brand of iceless cooling system called Cool Boxx. In that article there was a lot of good data posted, which is nearly impossible to find on other company's websites.

        The article is linked here and in the image below, but I will quote the important bits that were shared. This data details exactly why I am pushing folks to NOT go to an iceless system unless your driving stints are so long that it absolutely require it. And even then, maybe not.


        "The result is Cool Boxx, a self-contained system that weighs around 13 pounds and draws around 30 amps to run it. The system cools roughly 300 milliliters of water that you pour in the opening under the blue cap. The system adapts to existing cooling shirts via an adapter, but Cool Boxx also offers its own zip-up vest. ... the basic Cool Boxx system is priced at $2,999.... And the water temperature would still be in the mid 50s, which there is no machine out there that can even compare."
        Let's break down all of those quotes above. That one paragraph has a lot of good information in it, sometimes that other iceless system manufacturers don't want to share. Let's break it down:
        1. The unit is 13 pounds. That isn't terrible, and in line with the system we had, but some racers also add separate batteries to run their iceless system (due to the high amperage requirements). Most companies don't want to talk about weight. But 18 liters of ice + water adds up, too.
        2. This iceless unit needs 30 amps of 12V power to run and cool the on-board water supply. That is NOT a small amount of juice, and you might need to up-size your alternator if you plan on one of these iceless systems.

        We've seen some racers (sprint, not endurance) who run multiple dedicated batteries to power their iceless driver cooling system, which adds weight, cost, and another thing to charge during a race weekend.
        3. The system holds a tiny amount of water - 300 mL. That equates to 10 ounces, which is little more than a can of Coke. Again, any amount of spillage (every time you disconnect hoses to your cool shirt) with this very small of a capacity and you can trigger the system's shut down from "low water level". It happens easier than you'd think. Our $317 Paragon 18 liter ice chest system system has... well, 18,000ml of potential capacity. And 18,000 > 300. By a good bit.
        4. The $2999 Cool Boxx iceless system cost (which is typical, and they go up from there) is 10 times what ice chest based driver cooling systems cost, and that savings pays for a whole lot of ice.

        5. The quote that the Cool Boxx system can make water cool to about "mid 50s" temperatures are exactly what we saw in actual racing conditions with our iceless system, fully topped up and with twin 3" vents for the inlet air to the chiller. And I can tell you first hand, when you are pumping "mid 50s" water through a cool shirt vs 32F water through, that temperature difference is EVERYTHING.

        This recently published data once again reinforces my theory that racers running less than 2 hour driving stints are BETTER SUITED to an ice chest style driver cooling system during warm months of their race season. These ice chest systems are much easier to use (you toss in a bag of ice and some water), require a tiny fraction of the power to run the pump, do not require the ducted hoses into and out of the air conditioner system, never need extra batteries or an upsized alternator, and cost a tiny fraction to buy.

        And racers running in endurance series... well a 20 pound block of ice lasts a good long time in an ice chest system, too. In actual racing situations you might be better suited to changing out ice bags / blocks rather than spending time topping off your iceless system's itty bitty water capacity during driver stops. I don't have a dog in this fight, other than I hate seeing people waste money on a product that is 10x more expensive and just doesn't work as well.

        Cheers,
        Terry Fair - www.vorshlag.com
        2018 GT / S550 Dev + 2013 FR-S / 86 Dev + 2011 GT / S197 Dev + C4 Corvette Dev
        EVO X Dev + 2007 Z06 / C6 Dev + BMW E46 Dev + C5 Corvette Dev

        Comment

        Working...
        X