Since Andrew is gone and I am bored I will answer

the motor is one of those chunky jaycar motors, but I forget which model.

Hey, a quick experiment to prove or disprove the concept that the turbo housing is translucent: thrash a car until the effect is observed, then take a powerful light source of a different colour than the housing (I'm thinking of a green laser myself) and shine it on the housing. The different wavelength is just so you can differentiate the light from the red/orange glow of the housing.

If there is any translucency happening, you should see some reflected light from the inner components or some light should pass right through the housing. If it doesn't then the housing is by definition opaque and the effect is due to some other phenonema like surface heat variation.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

If a turbo does become translusant then it would by allowing light of lower frequencies (red) to pass through first then as it gets hotter the more colours you can see. So at first you should see a dark red blur apear befor any detail would come into focus.
Think about it.
And interesting that in Dumheads experiment the rotor melted and fused before any transperency happened but he seems to think that this would be different in a real car.
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Secretary of the Queensland Robotics Sports Club inc.

yeah because I didn't have enough power being generated by the combustion chamber the turbine housing was losing heat to the cool breeze outside too fast.
I've seen turbos a lot hotter on cars, but due to the turbine shaft being cooled and various other effects, the turbine doesn't run hot enough to melt but the housing runs up to a nice orange glow.

The motor on the blower is the Jaycar 12v 18800rpm motor with the timing advanced a bit for more revs.
The turbo compressor has a 5mm hole, the same as the motor shaft, so I just epoxied it on.
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The Engine Whisperer - fixer of things

I thought I remembered some posts somewhere about transparent aluminum’ this is probably not the right thread as no heat is required etc etc if you wont to be a nitpicker but I thought it worth posting anyhow.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=481

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123012131