spencerstaats
New member
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2018
- Location
- New York City
Made the mistake of driving my car in upper-80s weather last weekend with Best Buy's insignia brand thermal compound on it (though this was at highway speeds, 50-60mph, worked fine ~30min earlier in traffic with similar ambient temp), and I'm pretty sure I've cooked my power stage. I'm getting near identical behavior to symptoms described in Brickboard 7/9 FAQ, though mine is definitely permanently damaged as the car not only stopped running/no restart when hot, but when it does start after cooling off the ignitor is only sending spark every other time at best and barely idles (and of course the LH2.2 idle valve tries to play catch-up very poorly).
After all this, (and having had this in my car since February with no issues, and the car has a tropical fan clutch), I looked at the specs for the Insignia stuff and sure enough the max "storage" temp is 200 degrees fahrenheit - does anyone have experience with different thermal compounds for the power stage/heatsink interface, or know what temp range the ignitor will run/spontaneously combust at?
I saw in the Brickboard FAQ that (now defunct) Radioshack thermal grease was mentioned, looked at the SDS, and it seems to be Super Lube's silicone thermal grease with an operating range of -40 to 500+F - probably gonna order some of that now since it'll work even if the power stage immolates, but definitely interested in others' experiences with this because I didn't find threads about this when searching.
After all this, (and having had this in my car since February with no issues, and the car has a tropical fan clutch), I looked at the specs for the Insignia stuff and sure enough the max "storage" temp is 200 degrees fahrenheit - does anyone have experience with different thermal compounds for the power stage/heatsink interface, or know what temp range the ignitor will run/spontaneously combust at?
I saw in the Brickboard FAQ that (now defunct) Radioshack thermal grease was mentioned, looked at the SDS, and it seems to be Super Lube's silicone thermal grease with an operating range of -40 to 500+F - probably gonna order some of that now since it'll work even if the power stage immolates, but definitely interested in others' experiences with this because I didn't find threads about this when searching.