Hi everyone. I am at a point where I want to get more cooling for longevity of the car's engine and engine bay components. I was looking at the Seibon KS hood or Shine Feed bumper. What do you believe would be the better component to change out for cooling?

Currently I have the stock IC and a nice Apexi intake sucking hot air off the radiator. I will be going back to the stock intake box soon. So the main question is, which mod would be better overall for cooling to the car? A vented hood or a new bumper?

 

I think a vented hood would be better. A bigger bumper opening isnt going to do much with your "stockish" setup.

A modified stock airbox will be way better than any of those "hot air intakes". PM me if you want a kit for a stock box.

 

A new bumper would make slightly better cooling over a vented hood. I'm not sure if the stock under tray mates up with the Feed bumper.

For similar money I'd look into water injection. A basic system adds a lot of reliability and cooling. And you get to keep the stock body lines.

 

I would have to agree that the hood would help a lot more with under hood temps. I can see the heat coming out of my vented hood when I am at stop lights. Imagine how much is being pulled out when I am driving down the highway.

 

You still have a stock IC.... do you still have the stock radiator? Emissions? You may be premature for either the hood or bumper.

 

I do have the stock IC. I have removed all the emissions, added in a Koyo N Flow and Pettit AST, running an Adaptronic with a direct fire setup and parallel BNR stage 3s. The reason Iwas considering the hood is that I do see all the heat being vented on the hood of my Evo X that I daily drive. I am well aware of how cooked the FD gets, especially when parked. The FD tends to run at about 200F on an 85F day.

My thought is that an aftermarket bumper may let more air in, but all that air will still have no way to escape.

 

I think you have your answer then!

 

Yep, I just wanted to get a few opinions on it. Have to make certain it's the right choice. I do need a replacement bumper too, butt hat can come later.

 

FRONT BUMPER all the way

vented hood will not make much difference and something like a GTC front bumper will make a HUGE!!!!!! difference

 

E85

 

For a relatively stock car my vote goes for the hood.

The day that I had my hood installed it was a crazy hot day and my car was running a lot hotter than usual. Anyway, on my way to the body shop to install my hood my water temps were +103C (IIRC). Half an hour later (so just as hot), with my new hood the car was at +98C (IIRC). So that's a 5C difference. Additionally, after shut down the vents allow for the heat to escape rather easily.

 

Agree with Montego. But IMO you should be looking just as hard for something to replace that stock IC. FWIW, auxiliary injection also offers a lot of cooling value along with other benefits.

 

Yes, the IC setup is coming but from I have priced out will be more than the hood. I am thinking of doing the IC and bumper at the same time. Then I will get an E85 sensor for the adaptronic and visit Turblown again. The water injection is interesting too. I see it's not that much and if the benefits are better than either, I should consider that route.

 

I have to agree with the hood and water injection. Adding in air with no place for the hot air to go sounds like it just wouldn't make as much difference as a hood. I mean as Montego said his water temps were over boiling temp and by swapping his hood he dropped below boiling, even if just slightly that makes a difference. AI may also be something to look into for cooling and an ounce or two of power.

 

I think a larger front bumper with ducting is more beneficial. A hood is a good idea on how to let air out of the hot engine back, but 30+% of your cooling is done by oil coolers and of course the brunt of the cooling load is done by the radiator. The larger front bumpers allow my cold air into the heat exchangers. Duct the oil coolers and radiator tight and you should be doing fine without the hood. Since when you push the car hard it typically means you have more speed or mass air flow going through the heat exchangers. This maximizes the cool air through all heat exchangers for the car.

Also Remedy water pump helps pump the fluid through the engine maximizing the efficiency of the cooling system, especially at high rpms.

My car acts very differently than most. I heat soak when stopped, then when the car moves (with all the ducting and remedy pump) my cars temps actually go down the harder and faster I push the car. (I have a stock hood).

 

Just wanted to clarify that yes 103C is boiling temp for non pressurized water. However for coolant temps it is not even on the hot side. As a reference: on a 100% percent stock car, the fans don't come on until ~108C. With that said running 5C cooler by just adding a hood is actually a significant difference.

 

I guess its not as widely known that E85 drops coolant temps considerably under power.

I cannot remember if you have dual oil coolers or not. If not;

 

that's a pretty trick setup. Looks stock

 

I am on a single oil cooler Elliot. I am on stock boost now and you had mentioned my intake temps were too high to go anything over 10lbs. I'm putting the stock intake back on as my A'pexi is just sucking hot radiator air. Do you sell that setup Elliot? I like how that looks and I have that big empty space in the bumper nose. I would just need a Y-pip for the intake and extend it into the cavity in the nose.

 

I just came across an article today or last night, but someone took the temp differences between single oil cooler and dual in three types of driving conditions and it was a roughly 15-20degree temperature drop.

Another post stated that 30% of the rotary cooling happens through engine oil as well.

 

Yes, an oil cooler change can come, but my car won't be driven hard until next spring. Parked in traffic I doubt an oil cooler would make as much of a difference as the hood, but when moving I'd think the oil cooler upgrade would be a huge improvement. Right now it's a weekend fun car and I was to find the quickest easiest way to drop temps. If a Bolton hood drops the temps 5C, that's pretty good considering the work of boiling a hood on. I am keeping the car at stock boost levels for now too until I get temps lower.

So it sounds like a bumper is off the table and both the dual oil cooler and hood would be the best solution to do next. The bumper will be coming anyways but not until next year.

 

Theoretically, a vented hood will have a greater benefit as long as the air flow off the rad/IC are ducted properly out of the hood. The air passing through the heat exchangers needs somewhere to go and it doesn't matter how much area you have in front if there's nowhere for the air to go behind it.

As an analogy, imagine the air to be people trying to go through a hallway. There is one entrance and one exit. You can make the entrance as big as you want, but if the entrance is bigger than the exit, the hall quickly becomes crowded with people. The cramped people get hot. If you make the exit larger or add another exit, then people can exit faster and the line can move more quickly. In fact, because the exit space is larger than the entrance, people can start to run through the hallway instead of slowly making their way out.

While this analogy is not 100% representative, you get the idea. Ducting also works to help air flow, and the shape of the duct can help to create pressure differentials to force the air through the radiator and pull it out as well, increasing cooling.

WI and E85 keep the combustion temps lower, creating less load on the heat exchangers, a vented hood is still beneficial for the heat exchangers to work more efficiently.

 

You fellas have this SOOOO WRONG!!!!!!

Put the hood on and watch temps barely go down. Then a year later put the front bumper and watch the temps plummet w/o any side ducting and just the bottom cover it will make a bigger difference than a hood

On my track car I used the stock hood for years then put a vented hood on it and didn't even notice a change but the car ran really cool because of proper ducting and GTC front bumper.

On my back up track car with shark tooth mod didn't even notice difference when I installed the vented hood. BUT if I did the shark tooth mod on any of my other stock cars I'd see a big difference. NOT 3c more like 10c when running hot.

 

The stock intake screws you over because it blocks so much airflow out of the radiator. Likewise for the stock battery.
Switching to an M2 intake and mini battery blew my mind for moving air through the engine bay, especially at low speeds.
I think your best bet is to get a dual oil cooler setup. The bumper probably trumps the hood. But, it all depends on the state of your setup.

If intake temps are your issue, then you need to ditch the stock IC. It's garbage. Intake won't do much to drop intake temps, since the turbos are just going to heat it all up anyways.

 

Yea sorry I should have said "...over waters normal boiling temp." I think boiling under about 15 psi is 120C or something so yea 5 degrees isnt crazy but its still a fair number. If I were a rotary I think I would like that temperature drop. That isn't to say that a bumper is a bad idea though.