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My ducted radiator setup - road racing

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Fantastic idea :rocks:

My immediate reaction though is what about the heat from the turbo and that FP manifold? Do you have adequate heat shielding there? Because the ducting looks like it's right on top of it.
 
Here's a photo you may find interesting.

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This was after a weekend of driving about 750 miles in snowy conditions. 80% of it was highway miles at speeds >65mph.

You can see where there that sudden line on the hood where the little specks stop hitting. It's where the road grime would get pushed back along the hood instead of being splashed directly on it.

I bet that as long as most of your vent is behind where that line formed, you'll be golden.


(And yes, those icicles formed while I was driving. The weather was really poor during most of the trip. The intercooler froze over.)

Wow, nice shot! Kudos to you for noticing that and what it demonstrated! I'll definitely keep that picture up when I start making measurements on the hood. I'm thinking now that it may actually be more beneficial to move the leading edge of the duct slightly aft to avoid that area, even with the slight hit in overall surface area I'd get. I think it would be better to avoid that high pressure area all together.

Fantastic idea :rocks:

My immediate reaction though is what about the heat from the turbo and that FP manifold? Do you have adequate heat shielding there? Because the ducting looks like it's right on top of it.

I have a heat shield I made for the FP manifold, but depending on how it fits I may have to make another to work with the duct. I'm leaving an air gap between the runner and the duct, and along with a Swaintech coating that may be enough. I'm logging oil pressure and fuel pressure in ECMLink now so I may take the FP input and instead hook a temp sensor and place it in the engine bay to get an idea of before/after ambient temps under there, now that I'll be losing some airflow over the engine and components.
 
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Wow thats a great idea, i'm sure it will reduce temps tremendously if you can seal it properly. Also moving that radiator frees up a lot of space as well, i'll add it to the list...
 
If you really want to test the downforce created, just make some type of a ride height sensor and do before and after testing at various speeds. You could make your own using a potentiometer attached to your front control arms, or pilfer one from a junker with self adjustable ride leveling.

If it shows a difference, simply stack sand bags on the car while parked to give yourself a value in pounds.

Assuming you knew all the spring/damper information about your suspension. If you were able to get a set of sensors like that, with whatever values you obtained, you could just calculate the downforce and get an extremely accurate number instead of using the sandbag approach.
 
so are you just cutting a hole in the hood? If so, please consider a duck bill or some sort of raised surface right before the opening. Notice the raised area on the BMW that you posted.

He did mention he plans on that.

Side note: I'm planning on integrating a gurney flap just ahead of the vent to help trip the air going over the hood and help pull the air out of the vent.
 
Here's a photo you may find interesting.

I too have a great deal of very interesting picture of salt lines at highway speed. I have them from different angles and all outlined to show the patterns. If anyone is interested i could dig them out of the home computer.



this also may be of interest to the OP. I have a good relationship with a local company that did a redesign of an old Lotus Europa, here are the before and after pics. Before, After.

I am very familiar with that particular car and what might be of interest is the venting on the hood. obviously its mid engine so there is far less to dodge other than the luggage compartment. but pictures of the ducting and the fact that they managed to generate substantial downforce may still be of interest to you. If you would like i could dig for those too.

I have wanted to do a properly ducted hood on these cars for some time so i will be watching with great interest to see how it progresses.

I wonder about the effectiveness of this system vs a normally vented one. obviously the cooling benifits of this design are great. but I wonder how that will translate into reduced lift with the bottom of the engine bay open. closing it off would really get the front end to squat, but then you would need to be prepared to battle underhood temps. :hmm: alot to be considered with this then.
 
I too have a great deal of very interesting picture of salt lines at highway speed. I have them from different angles and all outlined to show the patterns. If anyone is interested i could dig them out of the home computer.



this also may be of interest to the OP. I have a good relationship with a local company that did a redesign of an old Lotus Europa, here are the before and after pics. Before, After.

I am very familiar with that particular car and what might be of interest is the venting on the hood. obviously its mid engine so there is far less to dodge other than the luggage compartment. but pictures of the ducting and the fact that they managed to generate substantial downforce may still be of interest to you. If you would like i could dig for those too.

I have wanted to do a properly ducted hood on these cars for some time so i will be watching with great interest to see how it progresses.

I wonder about the effectiveness of this system vs a normally vented one. obviously the cooling benifits of this design are great. but I wonder how that will translate into reduced lift with the bottom of the engine bay open. closing it off would really get the front end to squat, but then you would need to be prepared to battle underhood temps. :hmm: alot to be considered with this then.

Awesome! I'd love to see any info and pictures you have of the development of that car. I believe it directly pertains to this thread so posting them here would be perfect.

I do eventually plan on doing a full front splitter, but I want to test this setup first and see how it all works. I have a track day on the 9th of January I've signed up for, using it more of a test day to try to shake down the car so far and work out what other details need to be addressed first. I know there is a lot more work to be done but I just want to get out there to try to determine what I should focus on next.
 
What is the point of this? Wouldn't it be blocking the fan from doing it's job of cooling the motor since you will be blocking it? I'm sorry I just don't see this beneficial! Correct me if I'm wrong though and maybe I can learn something new today.
If you're not road racing you probably don't see the point. But controlling underhood temps is one of the biggest challenges for road racing, especially on a turbocharged car. Look at any road race car and you'll see ducting like this. The fans don't cool the motor, they pull air through the radiator to cool the water running through the motor. It doesn't do any good to keep that air trapped inside the engine bay. It's far more effective if you can pass it through the hood, not to mention the better aero effects.

Good job Beau. I have similar plans for my 1G and will share my photos once I get working on it. I'm planning on changing the mounting points for my radiator to allow better airflow and ducting. When we end up back in NorCal at some point I'll have to meet up with you at Buttonwillow to get a close-up look at your work.
 
The ducting you've settled on looks a lot like what AMS did with their Evo X, although they had considerably more room to work with, especially after doing a tilted mount for the FMIC/radiator:

Here are some pics of the latest progress we've made on our Time Attack Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X aka TA-X. | AMSPerformance.com
TA-X Update 4-27-09 | AMSPerformance.com

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Yep, I saw that and they did exactly what I wanted to do with the tubular front end. I still may do this in the future as I'm sure I will redesign this system in the future. I haven't taken the time yet to read up and see how its worked for them but that car overall is pretty incredible. The front splitter and undertray in particular are really impressive.
 
I've been doing a LOT of other stuff to the car to prepare for the track day on 9 Jan so haven't made a huge amount of progress on this particular project. Some other prep work I've done so far if you guys are interested..

-trans fluid NEO Racing Synth RHD gear oil (all other fluids are fresh)
-trans temp gauge to monitor temps (will be building a trans pump/cooler setup soon)
-replaced all coolant hoses except radiator hoses with Goodridge nylon reinforced hose, wrapped with 2200F heat sheathing
-flushed out all antifreeze, replaced with 100% water + NEO KeepCool lubricant (coolant is dangerous on racing surfaces)
-added piezo buzzer to low oil pressure warning system. Set to activate when RPM > 2000 RPM & oil pressure < 25 psi

Still need to bleed brakes with Wilwood fluid, mount my Toyo R888 tires and of course finish the radiator ducting setup..


I'm currently waiting on a local friend who will be helping me with some of the sheetmetal work for the duct. I'm planning on making a quick sheetmetal duct locally to test the system out, making any necessary changes, then sending out the finalised template to have it plasma cut and professionally formed by Andrew @ Frontline Fabrication (super95awd on the Link forums).

Next, I marked the area to be cut:

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Finished cut to show placement Cut is quite straight even though appears to be crooked in pics due to the curve from the hood bump :)

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Duct shown mated up to hood:

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In this process, I came up with another idea for the duct which I MAY try later depending on how it works, and depending on how the underhood temps do. Since the exit duct is forced to neck down anyway to clear the manifold/turbo assembly, it isn't fully necessary to open it back up to the full size that it is now. It does help transition the air more smoothly to flow backwards over the hood, but I have other ideas for it.. I'm considering changing the angle of the rearward surface of the duct to more closely match the angle crudely drawn in the pic below. I will then have 1/3 or so of the rearward portion of the vent in the hood left open. I'm considering using that portion of the vent to duct air out of the engine bay, in particular the turbocharger area. I'd use shaped ducts similiar to RRE/Carbontrix's hood vent, and it also happens to be placed in the same area. In THEORY, the air exiting the radiator duct along with the air flowing over the hood should help to extract the hot engine bay air. Once again I'll see how the duct functions using the full vent area and go from there.

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Beau
 
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nice pretty interesting! Maybe you could do like vents or slots on the duct towards the top where it flattens out to possibly help lower temps, i dont know if it would help any but just a thought
 

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Sorry guys, I've been really busy prepping for the track day which was last weekend. I'm trying to sift thru everything from the weekend right now, so I'll update the thread tomorrow with videos, pics and data! In summary - the prototype ducting definitely did the job! I never saw coolant temps over 193F, it was incredible. Drove the car hard too!

A little teaser:

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Beau
 
Great idea. Very clean. Good job. Wish it wasnt so close to the turbo but hey, it did the job
 
Car looks badass. Time to update the avatar:D
 
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