Has anyone used a fresh-air headlight cover? Does it work? Are there others out there besides the KSP one? ie cheaper ones. I've seen a lot of people making elaborate boxes and ducting - money aside, would one of these light covers be easier / better? Any experiences would help.

Nick

 

the fresh air headlight cover pretty much just looks cool, i got the one from rx7.com, looks very cool, i guess you could hook up some sort of ram air to it, but it looks like most of the air would go down onto the headlight.

 

They do look aggressive, but they are poorly located in a low pressure area. If someone has that diagram of the second gens pressure areas you will see that the location of the scoop is not ideal. It probably does get some air in there, but for the money, you could find something better to buy.

 

Oh dear....hear we go about this low pressure area thing again.

You have an airplane. The car is just like an airplane wing. You have air flowing over the top of the car and under the car. The air has farther to travel over the top of the car. The air under the car has go less distance. The air that parts at the front bumper must meet up with the air at the back of the car.

Just like a wing on an aircraft. This causes a low pressure area ontop of the wing (or car). This is how lift is produced and how airplanes fly. There is PLENTY of airflow going into the scoop and there should be PLENTY of air going into a duct on the head light.

This low pressure area has nothing to do with flow.

James

 

Air will always flow from a high pressure area to a low pressure area, not the other way. Since the area under the headlight cover is at last atmospheric pressure, but the air above it is below atmospheric, there's nothing forcing the air into the scoop. Lots of air may flow over the headlight cover, but I doubt much goes through it. Not at much as a duct mounted lower down anyway.
I still think those headlight scoops belong in the "looks" department, not performance.

 

I had www.mariahmotorsports.com stamp my factory headlight cover.

I'm happy with the results

 

i got the border one on my car and i noticed a bit of a difference with it on there

 

hey vaughnc just wondering but where did you get that green plastic looking pipeing? i could use that?

 

my Border headlight cover. "looks cool" my ***! I notice better air flow resulting in cooler intake temps.
-DL

 

I think Mariah built that setup. I'm guessing coolant hose or intercooler piping. They may have melted/bent the aqua blue pvc piping to make it fit.

 

Samps, that pic is located in the gallery.

 

I got my Fresh Air Headlight Cover from Rotary Performance.
With my cold air box, I thought It would Ideal to have both. RP claims not only It's aggressive but functional aswell.
I Installed It but It did not look right. The hard rubber flap from the bottom of the hood, which goes horizontally, which meets the body when you close the hood that prevents water from seeping In actually restricts passage of the Headlight cover. So that area around the flap was cut out to prevent restriction. Pretty neat observation that allows maximum utility of the HL cover.
Although, when I am washing my car I try to work around the HL cover. Eitherwise you will quickly end up with a water box Instead of a cold air box!

 

The cooler intake temps sounds about right. So does the wing concept. I was going to use that one. Look at the headlight cover. You see how its not just a scoop over the fixture itself? There is a reason for this. You have air going over the car like an airplane wing. If you have a scoop that sticks up the you will get mega turbulance at the leading edge of the scoop preventing air into it. Now if you see that the scoop is as vaughnc put it "stamped" Then you will get what I'm about to say. In order to have max air flow through something you want a vacuum created by minor turbulence at the leading edge. This is done by "stamping" the headlight. By having it lower than the air going over it the presure is slighly lower. The lower presure rises creating a vacuum. This vacuum sucks air into the hole and will, if you duct it, creat a ram air system. Kudos to Wankle7 for the wing thing, and Kudos to vaughnc for the stamp.
The inlet is on a great spot of the car for higher speeds. thats what most performance parts like that are made for so most of the time unless you are going real fast you wont even feel that much of a difference.
Charles