Sorry, you can't flame me for this since I've already got flames..........

Not only is it an exterior mod, it's fully functional with stainless mesh grills instead of the black plastic grates. In combination with my "hot air out"
mod allowing these ducts to do the job Mr. Chin (the Chief Designer of the FD3S) originally wanted them to do: ventilate the engine compartment.

Vented hoods? We don't need no stinking vented hoods!

Flames: $30 at your local sign shop, take your choice of
stock designs

hand formed stainless steel mesh grill: scraps

Epoxy putty to hold the grills in place: $2.86

2&1/2 inch metal cutting hole saw: $6.00

4" Metallic flexible dryer ducting to route hot air from the upper rear of the engine compartment inside the fenders to the ducts: $8.00

A cooler engine compartment: Priceless.

 

To each their own.

 

 

Hey, so really, aren't these vents actually pulling the air past the oil coolers through the fender (over the top of the inner wheel fender?)

Have you stuck a temp probe in there to see if it really cools stuff down?

 

 

Guess again

I bet your engine compartment must be 50 degrees cooler after the stickers. Go buy a mustang or camaro for the sticker.

 

How long have you had this mod? Does all this hot engine compartment air get the car real dirty from air from the engine area?

Ken

 

Sorry, but you would have to have some super undisturbed flow to push the hot air down and crosscar into your "dyer ducting" and out those ducts... I guarantee if you ran tests with thermocouples properly located you would not see a difference in temperature greater than test to test variation... Your efforts would be better spent working on the airflow entering the engine bay and exiting through a vented roof for example.

Your flame stickers look excellent by the way

 

You need to read the post instead of just look at the pretty pictures.

 

have any more pics of your car? paint looks like it would be pretty nice. flames look allright. not that bad.


Brandon

 

8 months, No.

 

hmmm...

 

i still like my flashing wheels

 

"The air outlet on the front fender behind the front wheel was a theme I pushed for right from the beginning...the outlet was meant to extract heat from the engine compartment....at one point I was told by engineering that an outlet for the engine room was not neccessary."

- Wh Huang Chin
Principal Designer
The FD3S

The Designer was right about the need to get heat out of the engine compartment, the engineers and you are wrong. Sorry. The hot air exits out the top rear of the engine "room" directly under the hood and then is pulled out by the low pressure created by the NACA ducts.

Thanks for the compliment on the flames - alot of people like them.

 

They now also extract hot air out of the engine compartment as well.

The grills and exterior of the fender where the ducting runs are incredibly warm even after a quick run around town. See my last post regarding Chin's thoughts on this........It's all about flow, getting fresh cool air in and out of the compartment as fast as possible. It makes the radiator and intercooler more efficient, as well as cooling the entire engine and components much more efficiently.

 

LOL,

 

I'm glad you like the flames. I'm glad they're not on my 7.

 

Yeah, I'll probably get tired of 'em after a while. Every time I think up something to make my ride look "better"
I keep coming back to the fact that when you have a design that good to begin with, everything else eventually ends up being cheese. After ten years of living with the same car you get bored.

Good thing they are just vinyl....

 

you crack me up Ron

I always wondered about the functionality of the ducts on the side of the car. I haven't read the Yamaguchi book yet ( I'm assuming that's where you got that info) but it seemed a bit gimmicky that they would be pulling air all the way from the oil coolers, through the fender wells and out those ducts.

The pressure is low enough to pull out engine bay heat? I might have to give that a try.

 

I think that is sooo cool. I'm obsessed with making my car run cooler. It's a disease. Do you have photos of the job, like where you pulled the hole for the ducting in the engine bay (right below the wire hole, or further down?) and how you attach to the plastic section on the inner fender that separates the wire loom/exterior from the venting duct system. This really could be cool (hee hee!)

Seems to me if you put an extra, flat tunnel just behind the turbo housing and run it along the body above the DP, you could dump this into the hole to provide extra pull off that housing. Make for lower temps in that area specifically, which with the DP is now the HOTTEST part of your underhood, right?

For that matter, you could put a fan in the dryer hose and pull the air constantly? Cavitation when outside low pressure exceeds the fans max CFM? Blockage when inevitable electrical short occurs? Hmmm...

 

I thought about doing the same thing with flames on magnets for those special occasions. Audi S4 has vents cut in the front wheel wells to dump heat off of thier twin turbos.

 

RonKMiller, I guess you had to take the fenders off to do this??? or did I miss understand something somewhere?

I'm curious...

 

I would imagins that the ducts are functional... Even in traffic with the fans on. Can't hurt!

 

Nothing at idle, but even at slow speeds it gets air moving. Its all about suction.

 

No !