Driver cooling in a autocross car.

Dunk your balls in a cooler before and after your run heat.

I've used the absorbent neck towels while autocrossing my old 240sx that didn't have AC. They're cheap, reusable, and pretty effective.

Serious question: How much weight will the "cool seat" add? Probably not much, less than 10lbs, I'd guess? What would the weight and HP loss be for a miniscule aftermarket A/C setup? I'm thinking something just large enough you could run a single duct and slide it up under your shirt(or I suppose anywhere else you prefer).

My only question is... Is this necessary? I think it is a great idea, but lets not overthink it here.

First, the second degree burn issue--that should be addressed, and not by a cooling method but by insulation. It would only have to be a small part that would be insulated so you shouldn't lose any vehicle cooling properties.

Second, keeping the drivers cool--would a large cooler filled with ice and towels be as effective, while being far easier?

In any case, I want pictures.

Okay, I have first hand experience with the cool seat.

We have been racing with one in our Chump /Lemons car for about 4 years now.

Its awesome!

I actually like it better than the coolshirt because it helps keep my butt cool and dry (even when wearing my racesuit).

We used 1/4 clear tubing (found at lowes) and created 2 circuits.

The 1 circuit does the lower half of the seat, the 2nd circuit does the back half of the seat.

I just used fishing line to sew the plastic to the seat cover at all the bends.

We use a 10 quart cooler with a small bilge pump to keep the cool water flowing. Lasts for 2 hours with it continuously running.

Its funny, people say it cant or shouldn't work. It does. Troy Truglio (runs the Biohazard Mr2) and was making fun of us for trying it. He sat in the car and I turned it on. He went and added one to his car......

It does work. It works well!

RossD wrote: Want a wacky idea? Use a Peltier devices (Thermo-Electric Cooler (TEC)) and just remember to heat sink the hot side or they'll die quickly. You could even use the water cooled heat exchangers for CPUs and run it to an external radiator. Run everything off of 12v.

Peltier devices are fairly expensive and hilariously inefficient. There's a reason they're not used for anything but gimmicks (like USB drink coolers, how powerful are those?) and boosting the power (at the cost of efficiency) of other, real cooling systems.

In reply to mtn:

Insulation was added a couple of months ago and made significant improvements to in car temps. Now the transmission tunnel is only very warm, rather than scalding hot. It's still not a comfortable place to spend a summer afternoon.

Any additional cooling improvements are strictly to make autocrossing a more enjoyable experience for me. The car should be the place to be. It needs to be more comfortable than standing in a parking lot roasting my ass off.

The system weight should be right around 25 pounds. I can live with that. I will willingly take the weight penalty to stay reasonably comfortable.

The rest of the parts should be in Thursday and I'll get started putting it together.

I don't like being hot, so that is not an option. That's the reason I pretty much quit driving the car. It will be fixed or I'll stop driving it again.

mtn wrote: My only question is... Is this necessary? I think it is a great idea, but lets not overthink it here. First, the second degree burn issue--that should be addressed, and not by a cooling method but by insulation. It would only have to be a small part that would be insulated so you shouldn't lose any vehicle cooling properties. Second, keeping the drivers cool--would a large cooler filled with ice and towels be as effective, while being far easier? In any case, I want pictures.

I'd say in some locations it would be necessary. My autocross group doesn't let you run your A/C in the staging areas because of all the water accumulating. Gets all over everybody's tires, then over the course of the day the start box, and starts creeping through the course.

Personally, I'd say it should work damn well. Dad had a similarly designed cooling pad from when he got his shoulder surgery done. Little insulated box with a water pump, ran lines to a pad he draped over his shoulder, it gets COLD and it gets there fast. Brand name was 'polar ice'.

-Hans

wvumtnbkr wrote: Okay, I have first hand experience with the cool seat. We have been racing with one in our Chump /Lemons car for about 4 years now. Its awesome! I actually like it better than the coolshirt because it helps keep my butt cool and dry (even when wearing my racesuit). We used 1/4 clear tubing (found at lowes) and created 2 circuits. The 1 circuit does the lower half of the seat, the 2nd circuit does the back half of the seat. I just used fishing line to sew the plastic to the seat cover at all the bends. We use a 10 quart cooler with a small bilge pump to keep the cool water flowing. Lasts for 2 hours with it continuously running. Its funny, people say it cant or shouldn't work. It does. Troy Truglio (runs the Biohazard Mr2) and was making fun of us for trying it. He sat in the car and I turned it on. He went and added one to his car...... It does work. It works well!

Perfect. I may have over engineered this though.

I was going to run 4 parallel circuits of 3/16" through the seat back and another 4 through the seat bottom.

I'm also going to run a small heat exchanger with a fan, to blow cool air into the helmet.

The A/C condensate dripping into staging areas thing is a very fixable problem. Re-route the A/C drain into a small tank with a drain valve and a way to see how full the tank is.

In normal use, the valve stays open to let the condensate drain to the ground as normal. On autocross days, close the valve so the condensate is collected and doesn't get the staging areas wet. When the tank gets full enough or at the end of the day, move the car to somewhere that a little water won't matter, open the valve and dump the tank.

Toyman01 wrote: I don't like being hot, so that is not an option. That's the reason I pretty much quit driving the car. It will be fixed or I'll stop driving it again.

I totally understand. I joke my LBC's are "two-season" cars: Spring and Fall. They are rarely driven during the Summer due to how brutally hot they can get.

I wonder if I could sew something like this into a removable seat cover so I can have some level of A/C driving to Summer car shows. Hmm...

hhaase wrote: I'd say in some locations it would be necessary. My autocross group doesn't let you run your A/C in the staging areas because of all the water accumulating. Gets all over everybody's tires, then over the course of the day the start box, and starts creeping through the course.

Is your location cool and incredibly humid? Or some sort of weird pool in the starting area?

I can't think of a way A/C would make a noticeable difference in the staging area/course in any region I've run. Any day its warm enough to run the A/C, the asphalt is very warm and the condensation will evaporate very very quickly. And most people are voluntarily soaking down their tires to keep them cool anyway.

In the interest of moving this forward, I built a seat insert. I didn't want to permanently attach the tubing to my seat cover, so I built this.

Starting with a piece of coroplast, I hot glued lengths of tube to it to hold them in place for the next step. Starting with the back, and then adding a bottom to it. Yes, I know they aren't even but I don't think it will matter.

The coroplast was used to give the insert some stiffness, so it wouldn't tend to puddle in the bottom of the seat.

Next up was to cover it. I've had very good luck using bath towels to covering seat parts in the past, so another was requisitioned to the cause. The entire thing gets covered to keep the hoses in place and to make it less likely to slide in the seat. 3M Super 77 does a fine job of sticking this together.

There are a couple of manifolds on the way, that will connect these tubes to the 3/8" lines running from the pump.

Toyman01 wrote: For autocross, I wear shorts and a moisture wicking shirt.

Well that right there is your problem. You need wear one of those fishnet shirts.

In reply to spitfirebill:

That would be terrifying to put it mildly.

Well it wouldn't work in the abomination, and you seem to have figured something out that will, but I've been thinking of adapting some car seat technology.

My friends have this thing, looks like dryer hose with a sheet on it, that attached to the front vent and to the car seat to direct air at the car seat. I'm thinking of running one either to my pant leg or under my seat to keep air moving at the very least.

Wicked cool! I want those for the car, for sitting around in beach chairs in the paddock, for drive-in movies . . . .

CoolShirt (the brand) makes a cool vest, and they changed the color from blue to black fairly recently. Some vendors are clearing out the blue ones for two-digit prices and I bought one.

Two of my track cars don't have AC and I sometimes drive them to the track rather than towing them. I can't quite see myself wearing a coolshirt without a track suit, and I don't need a track suit for HPDE. But I'm willing to try a vest over my t-shirt for the ride home.

I haven't spent time parsing the write-up, but somebody did a bang-up set of notes on their DIY cooler unit: cooler diy

In reply to JBasham:

Thanks for the lead on the Aqua Vest. $82 was too cheap to pass up.

Kinda curious how your region works their schedule that leaves people in their cars staging for hours in a row.

In reply to Toyman01:

Gel Ice pack on the nuts in the tight whities*.

*may be a bit unnerving at first. Also, this increases testosterone. So you may drive more aggressively. lol.

What a bunch of wimps, why back in my day we would just sweat it out.

Toyman01 wrote: In reply to JBasham: Thanks for the lead on the Aqua Vest. $82 was too cheap to pass up.

Well, thanks for the lead on the seat cooling pad. Now we can both double up and be a rolling York peppermint patty commercial.

In reply to docwyte:

You don't have to stay in the car while on grid, but 98 degrees standing on hot as berkeley asphalt isn't much of an improvement over 98 degrees sitting in a hotter than berkeley car. The whole point is to be cooler while in grid. In paddock, I run misting fans that work perfectly. I can't do that on grid.

In reply to iceracer: If I lived somewhere that summer lasted 4 weeks, I would just deal with it. I've got 6 months of fairly uncomfortable autocrosses to deal with, two of those months, the Devil himself stops by to warm up. I'm done with sweating my ass off.

If you can keep your head cool (literally) it'll trick your brain into thinking the rest of your body is cool, to an extent. Between my cool shirt and water-to-air intercooled helmet blower, sitting inside the car is the most comfortable place to be.

In reply to Toyman01: Actually summer here lasts 12 wk.

Now doing track days in 90+ heat can be fun. In the car, didn't notice the heat, it was the times out of the car that got hot.

20 minutes vs 2.

Really guys, I emphasize with you all. Just busting a little.

Im not sure iced balls are such a good idea. Seems likr they may get caught on the helmet chin strap.