Thoughts?

 

Welp, it looks like I have a weekend project now. Pretty surprised at the results for no airflow.

 

Not so sure that testing method replicates anything close to a real world environment.

I wouldn't bother with it for the negligible results when there is airflow.. Unless you like racing dynos then improvements with no/minimal airflow may be a big benefit

 

The results with airflow (car moving) is what you want to see an improvement on, that's what counts . By painting it black, the IC efficiency decreased vs plain unpainted silver (97 degree drop vs. 100 degree drop). It's a small decrease but it's a decrease, so why paint it? The improvement on the painted IC with no airflow is not really important because you are not taxing the intercoolers when the car is idling and the turbos are not compressing air and creating heat. In other words, you don't want to add a layer of insulating paint to the IC cores.

Radiators are the exact opposite. Porsche paints them black because they need maximum efficiency when the car is not moving due to a lack of airflow. Yes, there are fans but they are not as powerful as a 70mph flow of air moving through the radiator. When the car is moving the painted radiators may be just slightly less efficient than unpainted but there is a huge surplus of cooling air flow that it does not matter.