AC condensers (the part that's in front of the radiator) can be purchased in bare aluminum or painted black. The purpose is to transfer heat to the air. It seems to me that for maximum heat transfer the best choice would be the bare aluminum. If it has paint on it it seems like the paint would act as a thin insulation and reduce it's effectiveness at transferring heat. Since so many of these are painted there must be something wrong with my thinking OR the insulating effect must be very very minimal.
The same question could be asked about the regular radiator too, some are bare aluminum and some are painted black.
I have heard in the past some talk about "black bodies" but since this is not floating out in space and merely "radiating" heat passively in a vacuum but is also (mostly) losing heat thru the movement of air over it's surface it seems like any surface coating that doesn't have a very similar coefficient of heat conductivity would be detrimental to that heat transfer.
Anybody know anything specific about the effect or non-effect of the paint? Is it a 'special' paint? Does it just look like bare aluminum but it's painted with some clear paint so it's painted anyway?