September in Willows California promises to be HOT. We come over the hill in Reno, where the temperature may be 101. Dropping into Sacramento at 92 is like walking into a furnace. You know how they talk about a "dry" heat like in Arizona? Typically it's "it might be deathly hot, but it's a dry heat, so all's good." Forget that dry heat crap when you are in the Sacramento Valley. Dry heat is just a nebulous concept. There's a reason that agriculture is big business in this part of California.

Finding a way to deal with the high temperatures for long stints was near the top of our list.

Historically, race cars don't have air conditioning. Okay, I heard some do running races like LeMans or Sebring. But that's not the level we're talking about. What are people doing? Cool Shirts! http://www.coolshirt.com/coolshirt-racing.html




What these are is basically T-shirts with plastic tubing sewn into the shirt. The tubing snakes around your body and is connected via more tubing to a smallish ice chest. Cold water and ice are in the ice chest along with a small 12 volt pump. Turn it on and cold water is pumped from the ice chest, through the tubing sewn into the shirt, and back to the ice chest, bringing down your core body temperature. They actually are used in a variety of situations such as by firefighters and some military applications.

The base system can also be expanded to provide cool airflow into your helmet. A small air pump (remember Rich's helmet blower that we adapted to use as a defrost system?) drives air through a plenum inside an ice chest where it's cooled prior to being directed to the driver's helmet. Bunch more bucks, and Rich is the only one on the team with a helmet designed for a cooler, so we stopped looking at those.



It just so happens that Davis Motorsports of Reno http://www.shop.davismotorsportsofreno.com/ is one of the country's largest dealers for Cool Shirt line. And Rich Davis is maybe three blocks away and we've done business with him. It also just happens that a starter system with a single shirt starts north of $400. And each additional shirt for each driver lists at about $125. And there are several places that talk about building your own system.

Come on, we built our own cage, certainly we can build our own cool shirts. What could go wrong?

I started by looking around on the 24 Hours of LeMons forum for tips. I know that several teams have built their own units. I'm going to give you couple links to threads talking about DIY cool shirts. It gets a bit confusing because the three system manufacturers mentioned Cool Shirt, FAST, and UltraChiller) use different connectors. Actually there are two connector types which seemed to be differentiated by using plastic latches versus metal latches. There is some ability to mix and match between the two styles. Here's a quote from the lemons forum.

" The metal catch/release is narrower than the plastic catch/release. Therefore the grove on the female side of the connector is narrower for the connectors with metal catch/releases.
The metal catches will work with either of the female connectors.
The male side designed for a metal catch will not work with a plastic female catch. The plastic catch ring of the female side is diametrically to large to fit in the grove for the catch.
Cool Shirts and Ultra Chiller shirts use the plastic catches, FAST shirt uses the metal catches. We found this out at ECR last year."

That's part of a thread found here http://forums.24hoursoflemo...ewtopic.php?id=10380
we also read this thread http://forums.24hoursoflemo...ewtopic.php?id=10071
and we found a nice write-up here http://roocox.blogspot.com/.../diy-cool-shirt.html
http://forum.specmiata.com/...pic;f=2;t=004738;p=0

If you do not want to read through all of that, I'll cut to the end and tell you what decisions we made. First of all, we decided that sewing our own shirts was out. so we elected to purchase our shirts from Ultrachiller. http://www.ultrachiller.com/catalog/ These were less expensive than the Cool Shirt t-shirts. Rich elected to purchase the cooling vest from Cool shirt. http://shop.coolshirt.com/c...1845.102041.5232.0.0
I really spent more than necessary on the actual cooler box. I purchased the Engel cooler/dry box as used by Cool shirt. https://www.engel-usa.com/products/cooler-dry-box They nice features were the latches, seal and strap guides.
I elected to use the Colder Products connectors valved (dry-break) connectors throughout. I purchased most from the Wilson company http://www.wilson-company.com/ but also ordered directly from Colder Products. http://www.colder.com/ We used the PLCD line of connectors and basically followed the layout found here.

And we used a Rule brand bilge pump rated at 500GPH. http://www.amazon.com/Rule-...mp-500/dp/B000O8B7VO these got the most thumbs up in the build threads we read.




The bulkhead fittings used to actually go through the ice chest were designed for aquariums. Much cheaper than metal or industrial fittings. They are the Lifegard Aquatics P/N R270900.

And to top it off, I visited the dollar store and found a wire rack that could be modified to fit around the pump to protect it from being damaged by the ice sloshing around during the race. We welded up a retaining bracket to be bolted to the floor. And we were ready to go.



It works wonderfully. It feels as though ice water is being poured down your back and I usually cannot keep it on constantly but must cycle it on and off. Out of sequence, but I will say that at Buttonwillow with air temps at 109 and track surface temps hitting 145, our drivers loved the shiirts.

I'm currently working on a smaller version to fit inside the front trunk for those track days or autocross events where a passenger seat might be used.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-07-2013).]

quote Originally posted by DonP: Rich has pointed out that I left out the actual tubing in discussing our (mostly) DIY cool shirt build. Cool Shirt and FAST http://www.fastraceproducts.com/index.php offer insulated tubing. But if I remember correctly this runs in the neighborhood of $80! Way too much for us to justify. McMaster-Carr has a ton of different styles of tubing http://www.mcmaster.com/#st...ubber-tubing/=njdnq8 but that was just too confusing. Here we come Lowes. We picked up some clear tubing in 3/8" ID. The clear tubing lets us see the bubbles moving and gives assurance that it's actually moving. And it's a ton cheaper. .

Could insulate with the cheap stuff from the hardware store too. Maybe cut in short lengths so it bends better.

[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 07-09-2013).]

[This message has been edited by aaronkoch (edited 07-09-2013).]