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Howdy all,
Since folks are moving obstacles from in front of the radiator and installing tropical fans I am surprised that no one has addressed the need for improving the path of the exiting air.
The engine compartment is mostly sealed so that air flowing through the radiator creates a high pressure area inside the engine compartment as air "buches" up at the rear of the compartment. The now thoroughly heat saturated air is forced to exit by following the contour of the firewall to the underside of the car. Removing the belly pan is not a good idea because then the heated air exiting the radiator is pulled forward and recycled through the radiator when you are waiting at traffic lights or stuck in a traffic jam; just the time when you need all the cooling you can get. All this has been proven with temperature probes and pitot tubes by those whose job it is to do such things. Lucky for us, eh?
One air flow improvement is to install an air dam. At highway speeds an air dam will create a low pressure area beneath the engine compartment that will effectively pull air through the radiator. However, the bottom edge must be very close to the ground to work properly. If it is more than 2 inches above the road surface it is not a functional air dam. That means it must be made of rubber because anything less flexible will be broken immediately. Any car that sees daily use will surely break even a rubber air dam eventually. An air dam, as effective as it is, will only work at speed; it is useless around town.
So, short of punching louvres into the hood, the only place to improve exiting air flow is at the back edge of the hood. Remove the rubber along the top edge of the cowl that is meant to seal against the closed hood. Adjust the hinges so that the back edge of the hood stands proud of the cowl by about a 3/8 of an inch when closed. The resulting gap will move mountains of air.
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Mr. Shannon DeWolfe -- (I've taken to using Mr. because my name tends to mislead folks on the WWW. I am a 52 year old fat man
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