Just wondering what exactly is cryo-treatment, and what does it do? I was also wondering how expensive it is. Does anyone know anywhere that does it? Also, if I was planning to do the vg30t swap, would it be any benifit or possible to get the block and other parts treated? please help me out if you can. thanks alot,
justin

 

If you cryo-treat your pee-pee, it will get stiffer

 

My dad said he would give me something to cryo about.

 

dude, don't do that... that'll freeze your ni-nis off...

 

Well, all the jokes aside, cyro treatment is where you freeze metals off. It supposedly harden the metal or something. The metal has to be lowered to really low temperature, like -230 degrees K or something. -270 is about as cold as things can get, I think.
The places that do it has huge freezer where they put the components to be treated in.

My only experience with it is with cyro-treated brake rotors. My old car, a Mitsu Galant, has teeny little brake rotors at front that's just not big enough to stop the car. The rotor will warp in like a month! Of course putting a bigger rotor cost $$$, because you then have to get different calipers as well. It costs more than what the car's worth actually! I'm tempted to use slotted or drilled rotors, but that's not allowed under stock class at autocrossing. So I put cyro-treated brake rotors in, made by Frozen rotors right here in town (Twin Cities, MN). Pick it up there myself actually. The owner (?)has this very nice Porsche 968 with roll cage, racing seats, stickers, the whole deal. Anyway, it works. It lasted much longer than regular rotors, close to a year vs a month or so. I saw their freezer, and there's various car components including an engine block (V8) inside. I wonder what that's for...

 

Yeah pretty much. It actually changes the layout of way the metal grains bond together. The extremely cold temperature realigns them in a different structure so the resulting output is a very hardened, tough piece of metal.

 

does this process works with all metals? ie: steel, iron, aluminum etc.

 

it should do most metals. basically all you are doing is tempering the metal. you make it stronger but more brittle.

 

if the metal becomes brittle...won't it be prone to structural shock? hehe sorry with all the questions...just curious

 

with that understood, do you guys think that it would be of any benifit to cryo treat the engine block and all of the internals of the engine if i do the swap?

 

Here is a good FAQ for you. http://www.sub-zero-cryogenics.com/faq.html

And to answer your question, yes there is an advantage to cryo treating the engine block.

 

If the metal is subjected to violent heat changes, it might not be a great idea. And from what I understand, if the metal frozen and then brought back to normal temperature slow enough it won't comprimize the integrity of the piece. You run into problems when you freeze it too quick or worse-thaw it too quick. That's why your trouser snake shouldn't be cryo treated, it might make your wedding tackle brittle.

What has cyo treatment done for me? Well, it kept me from being able to diagnose bearing failure in my tranny and as a result my entire transmission is destroyed. Be careful with your pee-pee.

 

What's it done for me? My wallet is 40$ lighter and my brake rotors still have heat cracks like there's no tomorrow, even after 6 months of "easy" driving. at least they haven't warped yet.

 

Wow. Do you have any insight into the process the shop you used uses to treat stuff? Do you think it has to do with how it was done or do you think that it's just not all it's cracked up to be?

 

I plan to do my own cryo treatment. I'll be doing a set of wheel bearings.
-take apart the bearings and clean all grease out.
-Clean them really well with some solvent (probably methanol)
-I'll be bring them down in temperature in three stages, first conventional freezing, then with dry ice, then with liquid nitrogen (77 degrees kelvin), I dont think they go any lower than that, I while back I was reading one of the cryo web sites and they said that the liquid nitrogen would bring the down to nerly 0 kelvin (absolute zero) thats not correct. The only other thing they could do to bring the temp lower would be to use liquid helium (4 kelvin), but I dont think that would be economical for them and simply may not be necessary.
-The important part of doing this is to slowly raise the temperature (and this is when the grains begin to realign), and I'll do that by reversing the process of freezing the bearings.
-I plan to take measurements to make sure the dimensions have not changed after the process. Also exam them for any cracks with an optical microscope. I could go further and look for any microstuctre imperfections in the Scanning electron Microscope, but I dont think that'll be necessary ( at least I hope).

I wont be doing it for a couple weeks now but I do, I'll post on it.

 

so matt, would you suggest cryo treating rotors still, or did u just get a bad batch?

eric, u must work somewhere fun 2 have all those fun materials...or are u ganking them from scoo?

 

Cryo treatment of rotors is supposed to increase their life by 3x, so I dont know why they are cracking on him.

Yeah when I'm at school I have to use my imagination to have some fun. The other day I had some left over liquid nitrogen, so I was looking all over the place for something to freeze, I found an old apple, after dipping it for a minute I dropped it and it shattered
. I knew some people from RPI, and they froze some cans of shaving cream, then sawed off the bottoms and put them in a friends car, so then they would expand slightly, but when their friend opened the car door the shaving cream expanded rapidly , makes a nice mess too.

Originally, I only wanted to repack the new wheel bearing with a better synthetic grease, but then I decided to go ahead and also cryo treat them.