Over the years I've never ceased to be surprised at the plastic bags, leaves, cigarette butts and what-have-you my car can vacuum up. I've cleaned it out but haven't done anything about it despite a number of excellent articles on the Forum until my radiator gave up the ghost last week and I decided now was the time as I was waiting for FedEx to deliver the new one.

Most articles recommend aluminum gutter guard and it does look nice but as I drove to Home Depot I also had in my mind another Forum suggestion of rolling up filter material to stick in the cavity and replace when it was dirty. And in fact at Home Depot I decided on "True Blue 20 In. x 30 In.x 1 In. Budget Washable Filter" at Home Depot (Store SKU# 403347)" and installed it as follows.

My main concern was future replacements without the luxury of a pulled shroud so I mounted it using two lengths of 1" PVC. The first 24" piece of PVC (and it would be installed first and uninstalled last) clamps the filter material along the width of the back of the lower lip using three #8x3" screws to replace the three 7mm screws. The second length of PVC (installed second and uninstalled first) has the filter material tacked around it (I used four #14x1/2" pan heads) and then two bolts actually threaded into the PVC so they won't come loose that replace the two outer mounting bolts of the center air dam section. These can then be tightened or loosened from below.

Some may object to the bright blue of the filter material (and the pix are pretty color-accurate) but remember the sight line is distorted to show installation and it's pretty hard to see above the air dam unless you're down looking for it.

Some folks' time estimates for projects always make me wonder how I manage to get my shoes tied and still have other time in the day so this isn't one of those. Time to complete (with false starts, mistakes and trips to the store): 3-4 hours. Bill of materials: less than $10.

Pix are below.

John

 

Looks alright, but my only concern would be the airflow.

Jim

 

Thanks for the reply, Sweet90.

I had that same concern but based on my unscientific analysis (how consistently it's run at 195° in the TEXAS summer with a plastic bag and lots of leaves) I thought I'd give it a try BUT will keep my eye on the temp (and will report back).

John

 

Seems like they make a screen to fit in that area now, I forget which of the junk mags I saw it in.

But yours will lower airflow too much I think, particularly from stoplight to stoplight speeds.