Here's another shot...

Man, that is ugly! Have you contacted Cool Carb?
I have not had any reason to pull mine off, but the next time I get a chance, I might just to make sure.

Note: Another member had one do the same thing but he knew that he overheated his engine. They are supposed to be good to 300 degrees before melting.

Why would they use aluminum on a item that supposed to isolate heat?

Mine was in my A100 van, guess it's hotter then 300 under there...and my buddy's too.

As far as I'm concerned, they're junk.

Do any of you that melted your cool carb spacers have your choke heater passages open? or blocked off? Alot of heat goes under the carb if they are not blocked off.

That may be why it melted?

My friend and I both installed them (his is a two-barrel, mine is a one) and about an hour on the highway his trottle was stuck. So we pulled over and noticed his spacer melting, keeping his carb butterflies wide open! We both took them off and that's what mine looked like. His was similar. No choke things open or anything.

I will admit the engine bay in an A100 gets really hot, but neither of us was overheating...just regular heat as expected. Nothing else has ever melted in there....never melted any wires or hoses or anything. The cool carb thing is junk.

You had me worried so I pulled my carb tonight andI found my Cool Carb spacers/heat shield looking brand new. I have been running this combo since March and this is the first time that I pulled the carb since adding these pieces. So far they are looking good.

I spoke to that Cool Carb guy at length at Carlisle last year. Turns out that he makes these out of "end of run" material which he buys for a song. I got the impression that the whole business was built on the premise of "what can I make with this stuff?" as opposed to "what would make a good carb heat shield?". After reading the posts I think I'll stick with a phenolic spacer if I need one.

I don't care what kind of space age junk is between those layers of aluminum, because I would never use aluminum to isolate heat from my carb.

I talked with him too before I bought my setup. The material that he uses was designed by the company that he used to work for and retired from. The material is a heat sink material that is used in and around electrical transformers. He is a racer and he started making these for his buddies and found the carb to be much cooler on the engine with this material underneath. The material should work but once again, it has a maximum heat specification of 300 degrees.

I was a skeptic when I first put these spacers on, and I used a heat gun on the bowls after I drove the car and I found a substantial heat difference from the intake to the carb bowls. I took some more readings over this past weekend in the 92 degree heat and after shutting off the car, I found the intake in the 225 range and my bowls in the low 100's (113-120 range if I remember correctly).

All I know is that the product works on my car and it has now for five months.

I do have my hood vents open on my rallye hood and my A/F NEVER GETS LEANER than 14.4-14.6 and that is only at 45-50mph. All other cruise A/F readings (30mph to 70mph) show 13.8-14.2.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to argue with you. It appears that something was either wrong with the material or your engine is hotter than the material can handle. I just don't think that his carb spacers are JUNK which was written in a previous statement above. He tested the material at the track and found it to work on the race cars. He then put out the effort to provide a wide range of heat shields for many types of carbs. He even put his engine in a video and showed people what the temperature differences were that he found.
I would suggest finding out how hot that intake is before going on the net and saying that someone's hard work is JUNK before you know for sure that your application meets his product specifications.

Since they melted on more than one customers engines, I'd say there junk imo, sorry.

I tried to keep this thread from being a bash-fest but it appears that even those who have not even used the product are jumping on this guy.
We don't know if this is a product failure, or if it is a tuning issue, or if it is just the wrong application.
I feel bad for the three customers that have had their issues with this product. But for those of us that have been actually using the product and have not had any issues, how can the product be "proven" to be JUNK?
I checked mine last night and my three pieces (two spacers and a heat shield) looked brand new after five months of driving.

Sometimes, it is much easier to blame someone then it is to apply effort to solve the actual problem.

""Why should someone have to "apply the effort to solve the actual problem" when the product is defective. It's supposed to solve a problem not create one.""

Why did the persons buy the carb spacer in the first place? To cure an existing heat problem?

what about wood? Would a denser "hardwood" like oak be better, or would a softer one like pine transfer less heat?

I guess the stainless "heat shields" above my exhaust manifolds shouldn't work, but they did make a huge difference with vapor-lock tendencies.

yep there completly junk, i will be talking to the cool carb guy at the nats this year, and will be attempting to get my money back. both of mine on two seperate vehicles melted/de-bonded from the aluminum. both engines have never been ran hot, and were only on there for 4 months before the melted.

The plastic sandwiched in the middle of these is undoubtably a common low-end compound - a polyethylene of sorts (hence the relatively low cost!). Unless you get into REALLY expensive, exotic compounds, most only have a continuous operating temperature of around 200*. That's why those few melted. On a race car they likely wouldn't be an issue but on a street car they'd eventually become heat soaked and subsequently melt.

Last night I was testing some secondary jetting which allowed the car to get nice and warm. It was 85 degrees outside and my engine was up to temp (I use a 195 degree thermostat) and my tranny temp was right around the 190-200 mark after allot of spirited driving and a hand full of cruise to WOT runs. When I got the car home, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to take some temperature readings on the intake and the carb fuel bowls while the car was going thru the heat soak process. I took the temperature readings at the same two places from the time that I got out of the car until about 20 minutes later. All eight readings were taken in the same location which was about one inch down from the carb mounting flange on the intake and the other was on the rear fuel bowl (hotter of the two bowls). The first number is the intake temp and the second number is the rear bowl:
215/122, 213/118, 206/118, 206/117, 200/125, 194/122, 188/119, 177/118
The highest temperature of the intake was 215 degrees and highest temperature of the fuel bowl was 125 which was during heat soak. The temperature difference between the intake and the bowl was 95-59 degrees difference. The only material between the intake and the mounting surface of the carb is the Cool Carb spacers (2) and the Cool Carb heat shield.

I know that some of you are having problems with the melting of the material, but I am not. I have shown that my intake temperature is 85 degrees below the material specification from Cool Carb which is 300 degrees. The temperature numbers alone show that the material works to keep the heat from going up to the bowls. I understand the concern about these parts melting on your intakes but I am going to continue to run mine. Since I just checked mine two nights ago and I show no signs of melting, I will continue to run mine but I will also be aware of what can happen and I will keep an eye on the spacers. The material is great as a heat insulator! But the problem is that we don't know how hot these other motors are getting to create the melting issue. If those of you that have melted one of these spacers can show that your intake temperatures are below 220 degrees or so, then I would be worried about running these spacers in the future. But I have given an example of the temperatures that my spacers are sitting upon and I am not seeing the melting issue.