I was looking into a bunch of stuff relating to cooling yesterday (not Insight related) but I got an idea. Lots of people have installed warm air mods on their car, which draw in warm air by sucking in the air from around the catalytic converter and/or header. These components carry hot gases which is eventually discharged from the tailpipe, essentially wasting that heat energy. For that reason it makes sense to scavenge as much of that heat energy into the intake as possible.
However, the system of simply drawing air from around the cat and/or header seems very inefficient because the amount of heat conducted by the pipe into the moving air is probrably small compared to the heat energy available within the pipes. Has anyone tried adding heat sinks to the header or cat to increase the amount of energy transfer, or perhaps even a bonafide heat exchanger somewhere on the exhaust system?
However, the system of simply drawing air from around the cat and/or header seems very inefficient because the amount of heat conducted by the pipe into the moving air is probrably small compared to the heat energy available within the pipes. Has anyone tried adding heat sinks to the header or cat to increase the amount of energy transfer, or perhaps even a bonafide heat exchanger somewhere on the exhaust system?