Cool Shirt Options

RonInSD

Well-known member
Ron, thanks for the good tips for the heat.

The Cool Shirt is the best option. Your Cool Shirt vendor can also provide simple dry break fittings, get several as spares.

I prefer a 3 gal round insultated cooler with screw on top, from WalMart. Never could get the square ice chests to seal at the lid.

Used a simple 12V marine bilge pump with a dash switch and a 2 wire electrical disconnect, so I could unplug and remove it. Used simple screws to attach it to the floor of the ice chest, and sealed with silicone. Used simple tubing for supply lines, also sealed with silicone thru the ice chest walls.

Used a strong, simple motorcyle luggage net to secure it to a sheet of plywood bolted to the floor. Didn't want something that large, 10 pounds, secured to an ice chest with a few 1/4 X 20 bolts. The plywood also insulted it from the exhaust heat radiating thru the floor. Also wrapped it in one of the windshield heat deflectors to further insulate it. Used the type with shiny reflective silver and bubble wrap in it. That significantly increased the life of the ice.

Started with a bag of crushed ice, packed it in, and topped it off with water. Started off at 32'F and ended a half hour later at impound with the water temp at 65'-75'F. Ambient temps above 95'F. Could have used the frozen large drink bottles of ice, from home, to keep the drinks chilled, until needed. Didn't have an electric freezer in the trailer. Felt that the crushed ice gave more surface area and kept the water cooler. Would occasionally need to use the cool 65'-75'F water at impound to cool me, or my feet (in a GT1 car), even more.
 
Used my new "ultrachiller" shirt at HPR. Correct fittings for the FAST system I picked up and worked great for $89.00. It did take almost 2 weeks to get so plan ahead.
 
Buy a commercially available shirt from someone but using the DIY information it is childs play to make the rest....that's what I did.

One really important thing few seem to mention though.....get a cooler with a real seal on top. Otherwise after a few corners most of the water has sloshed out of the cooler, made a mess and killed the efficiency of the system. A wise person told me this so I invested in a cooler with real gasket....not that much more.
 
Back
Top