Left Side, came out perfect! Starting on Right Side and Beer number two.

 

Ditto, the Right Side, just got done, great job by my Shop Partner. I like it! If it performs, like it looks, I'd be stoked. Now to get hardware and paint both grills. Mounting, by late PM?

 

No screws. 72" of 3M PSA, automotive acrylic tape (thanks, Bruce, , you'll break fingernails before removing the L-48 emblems on the hood.

And as a total accidental benefit, we observed that both snorkels on the factory air cleaner, meet right up with the center section of the hood grill! Continous cold air, right there and a cooler engine compartment to boot! Gawd, I hope this works! Oh, if you've got nice valve covers, they're clearly visible.

 

Looking forward to test. Thanks for all the hard work.

 

Thank you, and you're welcome. I'm excited about it too. We couldn't do the last step, which is putting them on, because the paint was still soft on the grills, but John, did a beautiful job painting them. Careful prep, including a final acetone wipe down. I told him it d be on line. He used the expensive, Plasti-Kote Satin Black and it came out very smooth! He is a Master, with a Rattle Can! It never comes out, uneven or splotchy! Just nice.

We should have them on at lunch time tommorow and pics too. Testing, later on this week, as it will warm up again.

 

Can't wait yto see the pictures and hear about the results of this. I will be interested in seeing pics of the underside of the hood as well to get an idea of the underlying support structure and how this fits within it.

Great work Regis and John!

John

 

 

Here we go, we've got pics of the action from this weekend.

Careful and methodical measuring was critical in making sure the hood grills would absolutely line up right. We stood back multiple times from three feet, five feet and ten feet back and carefully evaluated if the grills were dead on. It is best to line them up against the center section of the cowl induction.



John, going to town, with the Makita Die Grinder. He made the line, that marked the cut, 1/8 wide, so that the inside was the limit and it came out nearly perfect, with only some block sanding to get the lines straight. He also backspaced the inside cut, by 1/8", so that the edge of the fiberglass wouldn't just butt up against the grill holes, but would be on the inside. I painted the raw fiberglass cut, black with a brush and acrylic paint.



We used a variety of tools to accomplish the cuts, including a jig saw, small diameter air grinder, with cutting wheel and a hack saw blade. Here are the results. It came out, just like I wanted it to. First, it makes use of the maximum available space, secondly, it follows the lines of the hood and the cowl induction and finally, I think it looks great! The intent was to come up with something that looks like it was intended for the car and I think we accomplished that.



Close up shot and check out how you can see the valve cover!



Factory Snorkel Intake right at the edge of the cut.



Another shot of the intake position, relative to the center and forward section of the grill.




144" + of 1/2" PSA, 3M Professional Auto Body 'Plus' External Double Sided Tape. So no holes to drill and I think it's gonna look great!



Lunch time, 12:00 PST and I'm going to see if John has installed the vents! We're almost there and only have testing to finish this experiment.

 

Here we go! They are on the Corvette and I drove it out to take photo's at lunch. If I must say so, myself, I think they came out great! I am stoked at the results visually and I like how they blend in with the overall lines of the hood and the car.

 

I have got to say, they do look great! They do flow very nicely with the lines of the car. I am impressed!

Can't wait to see some testing results. Way to go Regis...

John

 

Thank You, very much John and I'm glad you approved!

I showed a lot of my gearhead buds here at work, and the general response was very good. I really, really tried hard to come up with something that looked, like it belongs there and hopefully, the testing will go just as well!

If it does work, I believe there will be some of us, who are going to cruise all Summer long and not bake like a %$*&@!, while doing it!

 

Looks great there F22, looking forward to your test results

 

Looks good...
Are you planing to paint the car and the hood all one color or leave everything as is?..just curious

 

Nice job mounting those up! Super curious to see what the results are from your testing. Thanks very much for all the work you're putting into this!

Adam

 

I have to admit, they look sweet! Post your results when you test again

F22, Did you ever consider the vent in the rear of the fender? Just because it was all ready there?

 

Looks good. Definitely want to see some test results. You planning on hooking up some thermometers in there to test it?

Also, watch out with using those paper dust masks with a beard, they don't really seal well on a bare face let alone a beard and it's best not to be breathing in fibreglass dust.

 

Thanks!

We gave it a lot of thought and heard what others on this post were saying about the grills being the body color and we agreed, but for this effort, we needed to have it 'stand out' for easy viewing. What we didn't want to do, is polish the flying heck out of it, because we certainly could've done that. We've got the polishing wheels, compound and lot's of Mothers, but we wanted to avoid 'the bling' look. It had to be noticeable, but not obnoxious either!

The car will be painted someday, but right now, that's the original paint, minor defects, oxidization and all. The '74 (or Sassy, as she's known) has been through a lot, and we decided to 'preserve' the patina it had, but polish it out like glass.

Sassy is a rowdy, little thing and she's loved everywhere she goes. She's had a wreck, been through a front clip replacement (notice, no emblem on the clip), been romped on repeatedly, all her life, sat in side yards, back yards, car ports and garages for decades and she deserves those stripes! She's the perfect car for this experiment, because I'm not hurting nothing, putting these on the car!

We're super curious too! Thursday is going to be the test day at 1 or 2 PM PST, as it's supposed to be 79 degrees and that's as high as it's gonna get, but a good hour and a half the other day at the car show and it was quite noiticeable, so should still be able to see if the heat went away.

Thanks! We did look at the rear vent and really, it doesn't do much! Sure looks good though. There's very little room for any ducting and because of it's low position, down and on the outside, it doesn't do a lot. We thought we could put a 12V PC fan in each, right below the vent and blowing upwards, but we're going with a 'ram air' experiment later on (if necessary) that will route air from the outside grills on the front of the car and into the fender liner, right behind the radiator.

Yep, I was telling my buddy, just that! I was telling him at nearly that exact moment I snapped the pic! We parked the car hanging out the front of the shop, turned on both coolers to push the air out and then I stood alongside and was using an air gun to blow the dust and debris up and away from the cutting action (to not only clear the dust, so he could see the line, but get as much of it away as possible!).

He's a lifelong commercial plumber by trade and I can only imagine what he's been through!

As far as temperature readings, I'd love to have a thermocouple set up, with at least four inputs, but they're expensive to rent, much less to buy. We're going to have to do, what I did last time and use the two instruments I have, the BK Multimeter with the single thermocouple probe and the IR Temp Gun and take multiple readings after the hour is up.

I will also be doing the intuitive part of the testing when we hit that hour, like I did last time; reaching under the dash and seeing how hot to the hand, the brake pedal arm is (and that's a good one, because it's nowhere near the exhaust) and also the hood release cable (which was blazing hot, on the last test). If these stay relatively cool or just warm, then I know it's working well.

I also plan on doing what Airborne Silva and I were doing earlier, and after the drive, with the hood up, shooting temps on the outside of the firewall and seeing what the temperature of the Brake Booster, Wiper Motor, Coil, etc was, because we were both measuring an average of 140 to 150 degrees and higher on those components from the heat soak!

If we get those temps down, then I can surmise, that indeed, the Heat Extraction on Phase 1 of our test is working and we can claim success. If it doesn't work, I'll report that too, but at this point, it would be hard to believe that six feet of holes in the hood, wouldn't do, what I think it's going to do!

 

LudemJo, asked me to post a pic of the underhood structure and I found one in the dozens of photo's we took, during the evaluation and before we started cutting.

You can see by the shape of the outer and upper square and the space below it, where we got the shape for the hood grill. It is the only area you can cut, without touching the outer beam or the center section under the cowl induction.



Tonight, I adjust the left window and finish that job. Tommorow, I leave early and am going on an hour and half test drive. Same route, north from Palmdale, up Sierra Highway to Mojave and then back on the 14 South, to work, and I'll post the results of the testing with the BK meter and the IR gun.

 

Somewhere here on the forums I saw a car where they had mounted a puller fan down by the passenger side fender vent. It seems like it was a car that was raced (road race maybe?), and if memory serves, it was a pretty standard radiator type electric fan.

I have wondered about this as it would be towards the back of the engine compartment where the heat would in theory "collect" and draw the heat out and away from the firewall area.

With that said, an AC car would be a real challenge for space on the passenger side - maybe the drivers side would be an option? The only issue I could think of there (depending on the year of the car) would be the washer bottle. I would think there are fan sizes available that would work within the space limitations?



Adam

 

I did look! The passenger side has the AC and man, space is really, really limited, though you could actually mount a fan on the bottom or floor of that inner fender area behind the fan, blowing upwards.

And to direct that air, I thought of some kind of vertical tube with baffles above the fan, that would pull air from the fender vent as it went upwards into the engine compartment, but would be positioned right behind the fender vent. It'd be a tough row, to hoe! On the drivers side, there is some weird can, that's hooked up to the brake distribution valve (what is it?) and there's no room at all!

And that's one of the reasons, I went with the ram-air system from the front turn signal grills. If you take a close look, you can see, that it wouldn't be that hard to pull off. You just have to go up and into the upper-front part of the inner fender and then, plug it right into the fender liner and there's room for a two inch line there too, right behind the radiator. Haggisbash mentioned axial fans and that's a much easier proposition, within the ram air system, because you'd actually have the room to mount something like that, within the forward ducting, from the outside turn signal grills on the front of the car.

But, then, I'd have to consider the non-flowing aspect of the fans themselves, if they weren't on and what kind of blockage, they'd represent, unto themselves! My thinking was, that I'd have to run TWO separate tubes into the forward vents, if that was the case, one for the axial fan and another for the straight ram air, if the car wasn't at a stop and using the fans.

Crazy huh?

We might not even need any of this, if the hood vents work, the way they're supposed to! At least I'm hoping for that. I'd like to avoid the extra complexity, if we could. The ram air, is simple (as long as there's no fans) and wouldn't be hard to do. I even came up with scoops! I was going to fab them, but then I thought of the shop vacuum cleaner nozzle attachments, that are square, with a built-in hose connection!

We'll see how it all works out tommorow! Sassy is going to roll into the desert and I'm going to bring my notepad as I did last time, take pics and monitor everything possible!