I’m planning on doing some testing to make sure a couple of the engine components (ignition coils and voltage regulators) aren’t subject to too high of temperatures in while running and from heat soak after engine shutdown. I know they make stickers for this purpose but I was wondering if using thermocouples would give more refined data. Has anyone tried measuring component temperatures using surface mount thermocouples? Any tricks?
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Aerospace companies I’ve worked for generally epoxy them on. Works great!
No info on heat soak measurement on those items, but I always removed the oil fill cover after each flight to let the heat out.
David A.
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The beauty of the temperature sensitive tape is that you get a permanent record (not all tape) of Max temperature.
The tape is not cheap, for a little more you can get a digital in/outside/fridge temperature gauge that will give you a reading at any time.
I use both.
Tape where I am only intersted in Max temperature, that the component (ignition modules) have been subjected to.
Digital gauge where I am intersted in the general under cowl temperature at various stages of flight 
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Stick surface TC down with VHB tape, then cover with high temp RTV to insulate some and read body temp, not air temp.
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I had to look that up! Cool stuff. Welcome to the forum tmritter44!
I’ve used thermally conductive adhesive to measure the temperature of various electronic components. Ref. Silicone Thermal Conductive Adhesive. When cured the adhesive is much the same as RTV.
You can make a TC by just stripping some TC wire and twisting the two wires tightly together. When measuring component temperature, I clip all but one strand of the TC wire before twisting so the response time will be fast and so that the TC wire won’t heat sink the component under test. If you use that method, make sure that all of the twist is buried in the adhesive. The wires can’t touch outside the adhesive.
Good Luck.
Wes
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