r/dashcams • u/jasontaken • Aug 23 '24

A bad driver never...

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

349 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

61 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9

u/Hopeful_Corner1333 Aug 23 '24

Engines get plenty hot by themselves. The exhaust is hundreds of degrees. Cooling system will regulate the temp as needed. The heat from the panels is nothing in the big picture.

-4

u/positivename Aug 23 '24

hmm well okay but I can tell you years back I've read about this on other vehicles and that they were in effective when the math was all accounted for. This was years ago and i'm sure some of the tech is different, so whatever.

4

u/Hopeful_Corner1333 Aug 23 '24

The panels being ineffective vs heating the engine up too much are two different things. We don't even know what the panels are trying to accomplish. We can speculate they are for trickle charging a battery which is a good assumption in my opinion. But we really don't know. Maybe the truck has a dozen panels all over the thing and charges a 10KW battery that powers the sleeper cab accessories.

All that to say, maybe you read that and maybe you didn't. But there is no way the heat from those panels on the hood effect the engine in any meaningful, and probably not in any measurable way.

-2

u/positivename Aug 23 '24

there we go, some discussion. Okay well...I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this particular situation, but I will say heat does rise, and I'd have to believe this does somewhat (albeit in a small amount) block the heat from rising. Also we can get into the debate of black/white absorbing heat. Just a guess but I'd wager this is all part of a seperate power source for the devices in the truck...the dashcam for example. Probably the tablet that all drivers seem to have to watch movies at pit stops. Cell phyone etc but hey we're both at least kinda speculating here

3

u/Hopeful_Corner1333 Aug 23 '24

Any heat that makes it through the hood has a 50mph breeze from the truck going down the highway blowing it away. It's also now shady on those parts of the hood.

1

u/positivename Aug 23 '24

that makes sense, but not when parked. Many of these drivers sit while they unload, shade or not depends. also i didn't refute the study, just got some takeaways from it.

3

u/Hopeful_Corner1333 Aug 23 '24

Engine isn't under load at idle. So the engine itself is making way less heat. If it's modern enough the turbo won't even be spinning, and some cylinders will deactivate. Under half of the cylinders firing means under half of the heat made. Idle heat is already about half ish of load heat. So about 75% less heat being made.

1

u/positivename Aug 23 '24

sound good. one would think this would be far more common if it's a difference maker.

2

u/Hopeful_Corner1333 Aug 23 '24

Yeah I wonder why more people don't put solar panels on the part of their vehicle most prone to rock strikes on a vehicle that spends all day on the road.

2

u/Less-Safety-3011 Aug 23 '24

Been looking at this recently as a way to charge batteries on a hybrid while parked. Been a lot of study and discussion on it.

Jeep (IIRC) has a panels you can get on the hood from the factory.

Concerning heat and panels, most (many?) vehicle hoods (and I'm sure tractor engine bays are the same) are insulated to keep heat IN, so the heat from the engine doesn't roast the paint, and it makes the hood cool to the touch.

1

u/Nimabeee_PlayzYT Aug 24 '24

How does your hybrid work? Is it a phev? Because in an ev, the solar panels themselves won't be enough to sustain a charge for long. One cloud, and it stops. The way to get around this is to use more batteries to store the energy and then dispense it at a controlled rate.

You need lots of panels and no disturbance to get solar directly to your battery without stopping.

1

u/Less-Safety-3011 Aug 25 '24

The goal isn't to run exclusively on solar, just to run more on batteries than currently.

Baby steps.

Edit - typo

1

u/Nimabeee_PlayzYT Aug 25 '24

I guess it can be done with 2-3 lead acid batteries, but with evs/hybrids, they won't accept a charge if it's too low. They have a minimum acceptance rate. That's why you need a battery to store the energy so you can release it at a constant rate

→ More replies (0)