After reading about "Dads" C63 vented hood...it got me wondering if we could do something similar to allow for better heat dissipation with the Black Series. Take a look at the following photo. You can clearly see that the inside of my hood right under the vent is becoming discolored from excessive heat. Now, going back to Dad's hood...where he installed vents...we already have a vent, but the vent only opens into the engine bay on the sides...you can see from the picture that the underside of the hood is a solid piece that allows no heat from the motor to escape.
I'm wondering if there is a way to remove the hood, cut the underside to expose the vents and then reroute the windshield washer tubes that go to the jets ?? Seems like an easy to way to use the existing hood vent to allow for heat to escape - cause clearly (from the discoloration of my hood) there is a LOT of heat in that area of the motor that has nowhere to go but back and down through the transmission tunnel.
I've also been toying with the idea of adding some ducts a la the SL65 Black Series hood but I'm not sure I want to do that to my car and make it look like something it's not...even though it would be a very functional mod. I'm all about modding, but it has to be functional yet retain the OEM look. So, I'm leaning towards modifying the underside of the hood to open up the existing hood vent. What do you guys think ? And yes, I've been a bit bored lately

Edit - I forgot to mention...When I used to have a 993; all the guys I spoke to who knew the 993 inside and out....said it was best to remove the large plastic tray under the engine because it trapped heat inside the engine bay. We also have a similar black plastic tray under out motors...I wonder if removing it would help out with temps....but there's also the possibility of something hitting the oil pan and that would be no bueno....

 

I think the risk of oil (earl, as my yankee uncle pronounced it) pan damage is insignificant. How many American V-8's (over time) have had the drain plug and bottom of the oil pan fully exposed. I've never punctured one but I bet someone on the board has .... still low risk to me.

The bigger worry is the effect on aerodynamics, aren't there a couple of vents that direct ground level air up into the engine bay?
While it may be minor, you'd hate to lose some down force on a high speed track turn and from what I read, you guys in Cali have a few of those type turns. Not that many here in TX, especially since TMS is closed to guys like us after the death earlier this year.

 

Luke, I pondered this same thought a while back, although I had a slightly different approach and idea to address the heat issus. I found out that I could lower the under hood temps by about 25 degrees by removing the black fiber insulation mat affixed to the inside of the hood. A few strategically placed adhesive backed cheap thermometers from cooking store and you can condut your own experiment. Obviously that fiber mat is there to protect your hoods paint from those blistering temps. There is a paint avaiable that will do the same thing as the mat but not insulate inward, in theory it should reflect the heat away from the hood surface protecting the automotive finishon the outside but will not insulate the engine bay and hold heat in like that mat is doing. The paint is a flourine-carbon paint, esentially the same stuff they paint the inside of self cleaning ovens with. Maybe I will finally test it out to see how it works. Here's a link to the paint I found and have been wondering about trying.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/27...eflection.html

 

Hi Jim,

Just a thought about that paint. If it reflects the heat away from the underside of the hood and the exterior factory paint on the outside of the hood, doesn't it seem that the only place that the reflected heat can go is to be reflected back toward the engine compartment? If that is true, it seems as though the result would be even higher engine compartment temperatures. That can't be a good thing.

JDB

 

I too have wondered the same thing, I'm not a scientists so I don't know for sure. In reading about the paint they call it reflective but it sounds more disapative than reflective, they also use thiis stuff on parts of the space shuttle and they describe its properties more as disapative than reflective. What I do know for a fact is that the black fiberous mat holds a lot of heat in the engine bay. An aluminum or carbon fiber hood would be the best option since they both disapate heat fairly rapidly, carbon is the best, I assume that's why there is carbon in the paint I mentioned. Some of my motorcycles have exhausts with cf canisters, they never got hot, you can run the motor at 13,000 rpm and have your hand wrapped around the exhaust canister without getting burned, you can't do that with aluminum, stainless or titanium canisters.

Maybe I will give this a shot and then do some tests, howver I suspect the ideal way to conduct this kind of experiment would be with a complex temperature monitoring system which could be monitored via laptop while the car is being driven in various conditions. I'm pretty sure our computers pull timing when intake temps get too high, so this may be a fix or the few degrees (20 to 30) we are talking about may not be enough to make a difference. It would be nice to know bt could be a lot of work for minimal gains.

 

that's a good idea as well, Jim. I'll look into that paint...I too thought about removing the black heat insulating material, but then I know the underside of my hood would get toasted brown like the pic I posted above. I really think opening up that underside of the hood below the vent would allow for a TON of heat to escape as it's at the back of the hood and airflow would naturally push it out when the car is rolling. Water ingress is an issue to consider, but I think the negative effects would be minimal and I also live in a somewhat dry climate.
I think I'm gonna take my car this week over to Beverly Coachcraft and have Peter take a look at modifying the underside of the vent. I'll post his thoughts and let you guys know what progress (if any) I make.

 

Jim,

For checking underhood temperatures, do they still sell those temperature sensitive stickers? I know they were available about 40 years ago to the racing community to allow checking of temperature conditions. They would change colors if specific temperature ranges were reached.

Might be just the ticket for your research.

JDB

 

Yes and no, I'm in the shipping and trucking industry, they actually developed those kinds of stickers for shipping perishable and temp sensitive goods, if a shipment arrived and at any point during the shipment the container exceeds a certain temp the thermo sticker will indicate that it did so. The only problem is I can't find any of those with temps high enough for the temps we are talking about under the hood. They probably exist but I have not found them, maybe a scientific or laboratory supply place would have them with higher temps.

 

Jim,

Here's a link for some that will record up to 500 F.

http://www.palmerwahl.com/pdfs/TempP...TempPlates.pdf

Would that get the job done for you?

I just Google'd temperature indicating stickers.

JDB

 

I've been concerned about our high engine temps also & have considered the 180 degree thermostat that MHP's been selling. Anyone tried one of these? He claims 15 - 25 degree F drops in engine temps.

 

Jim...your off suspension/probation.....congrats.

 

I've also thought about running those thermenolator (or whatever they're called) gaskets and the 180 Tstat...Anyone have any experience with these...are the gaskets the same thing as a phenolic gaskets ?

 

Luke, I took my BMC filters out today for cleaning, and while they were drying in the sun, I looked under the hood for some better airflow solutions. If the car is stationary, unless you go with a louvered hood, their is really nothing you can do for better airflow. However, I found one thing that will help to extract some hot air out of the engine compartment quicker.

Between the condenser for air condition/radiator, and the cross member where the hood locks into, there is a gasket. As far as I can tell, it is fastened to the cross member by 3 screws. Taking it out shouldn't be too difficult and is worth a try. By removing this piece, air will now flow over the heads and intake and out the hood vent towards the windshield. I can think of only one draw back, that it might create some wind sound at higher speed. Anyway, I think it's worth a try.

 

Nice find Sascha, I'll take a look at it. It sounds like that would create some nice cross flow/ventilation, but the underside of the louvers in the hood still needs to be modified/opened up for heat to escape. As it is in stock form, those louvers in the hood only open up outside the engine bay on the far left and right sides.

 

Does the black series suffer from over-heating/heat issues?

 

No, but it does develop some very high underhood temps that most likely cause the motor to pull timing in hot climates, thus reducing power.
I'm simply looking into ways of mitigating this and increasing airflow as well as helping the motor dissipate heat better.

 

Thanks for the clarification. Trying to learn as much as I can about this model.

 

Sascha - I removed that strip and went for a run today. Seems like it kept the oil temp below 120C...Usually it's well over that but then again it was 56 degrees out today. I'll keep and eye on it but it looks like we're gonna have cool temps for the next week at least. Thanks again for the tip

 

I had the the MHP thermalnators installed for about 18 months, they seemd to deteriorate rather quickly, I had my intake removed for some additional mods last winter and they(thermalnators) were not able to be salvaged or re-used/re-installed, they became very brittle and almost dry rotted looking, I guess that is the best way to describe what happened. Now I am trying out the evosport phenolic spacers. As for MHP Tstat, I had issues with that as well, This past spring it stuck and failed caused me to over heat and became non-functional. I spoke with Andy and he did stand behind his TStat, he offered me a new one at no charge but I passed on the offer, I did not notice any difference in temps between the stock Tstat and the MHP unit, I ran the stock unit all summer and will continue to run the stock unit. I'm not saying that the Tstat did not work as described, just saying there were no noticible gains/advantages in performance or with under hood temps or water/coolant temps.

Luke, to answer your question regarding if phenolics and Thermalnators are the same? They both should acheive the same goal but they are both made out of different materials. Phenolic is a complex high pressure sandwhich of paper type fibers and a fabrics as where the thermalnators are made out of some type of plastic resin, looked like a nylon or delryn but looks like it could also be a urythane based material. Urythane is an olyfin and olyfins are poor at disapating heat so I doubt it is urythane.

This is not an Andy or MHP bashing post, like I said he stood behind the Tstat, I just wanted to let you guys know about my experiences with these two products.

 

Are both of the bumper louvers venting something on the BS? On our C63, the passenger side bumper vent is for the oil cooler, while the driver side one is fake (blocked off). I was thinking of removing the plastic block to allow additional airflow into the engine compartment.

 

Thanks so much for the answer to my question.

 

I have this under development and the preliminary mold for a carbon vented hood has been approved. I will still need to test fit the hood. It is based on the sl65 bs hood, but our cars are black series cars, so I have no qualms about mimicking the design. I'm actually quite excited to see the end result painted.

 

Very nice, lines look clean. I assume it will be functional venting? Is that going to be a one off custom our are you going to be selling them? I might be interested once I can see how one looks painted and installed.

 

I sent the fabricator a hood around christmas time, and was doing the hood as a custom project. In terms of function, I am assuming that the underhood temps will be lowered. I spent quite a bit of time calculating the vent sizes and positions comparing them to the sl65 black series hood, but I have in no way done scientific tests on the hood to measure aerodynamics. The temperature change will have to be tested once the hood is installed. I'm hoping that it does have a functional benefit in addition to looking good. If you want more details about the hood just shoot me a pm.

 

I appologize for being unclear, I meant to ask were the vents functional and open allowing air to pass through and it sounds like they are. I'm sure it will offer significant improvements over stock when it comes to cooling and under hood temps. Nice work, keep us posted.