My New Cooling Mod
Thread Starter
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 106
From: Long Beach, CA
Guys, I wanted to post some pics up of what I spent a better part of last weekend working on. I have been frustrated by my cooling temps on the freeway when it is above 90F, it is no doubt due to the big Blitz fmic.. the poor radiator was just plain not getting enough air flow. I had already ducted off the sides and top of the intercooler, that made a significant difference but my temps would still slowly climb in the heat if I was on boost or significant load (driving up a long hill for instance). I was originally trying to devise a way to cut the underbelly pan and create an extension of it in a way to bring in more air from underneath the intercooler. I realized that this would create a big clearance issue under the car for driveways etc.. so the next step was to cut an opening in my almost new 99 lip.. it hurt and took guts to do it but I am happy with the results so far.
The images show the final product so far, it is still a prototype and I haven't decided if I want to make the final out of CF or just aluminum. This version just uses sheet metal which was easy to cut and work with. Basically all I did was cut off the front portion of the plastic on the top side of the underbally pan, that thing sticks up a couple of inches.. this cleared the way for the new metal piece. The sheet metal sits on the top of the underbelly pan, meets flush with the bottom of the 99 lip in front, and I angled the rear portion (not shown) to direct the air entering right up to the radiator. The result is about a 2-2.5" air space below the fmic to allow unobstructed air to get directly to the radiator.
Results.. well I haven't driven it too much since. But the day after I spent driving around in 90F heat and just railed on it around town, I couldn't get the water temps to rise above 88C.. more testing will be done and a final version with more pics will be posted when I have the time.
Matt
The images show the final product so far, it is still a prototype and I haven't decided if I want to make the final out of CF or just aluminum. This version just uses sheet metal which was easy to cut and work with. Basically all I did was cut off the front portion of the plastic on the top side of the underbally pan, that thing sticks up a couple of inches.. this cleared the way for the new metal piece. The sheet metal sits on the top of the underbelly pan, meets flush with the bottom of the 99 lip in front, and I angled the rear portion (not shown) to direct the air entering right up to the radiator. The result is about a 2-2.5" air space below the fmic to allow unobstructed air to get directly to the radiator.
Results.. well I haven't driven it too much since. But the day after I spent driving around in 90F heat and just railed on it around town, I couldn't get the water temps to rise above 88C.. more testing will be done and a final version with more pics will be posted when I have the time.
Matt
