I want to louver my hood for cooling for my radiator and I think it looks good on a modified 914. Any ideas? Anyone knows a shop in the Houston area that stamps louvers?

Not sure whose car this is but I like the louver placement but just not sure if it would do anything but add cosmetics? Any better ideas?? I have seen some boxster side vents that look nice too..

I really like "Tylers" red v8 side vents in the classifieds. The louvers on the picture above does look good. I've seen a few that looked like someone added house ventilation louvers--it's a fine line.

Now, other than the cool factor, unless you plan on exhausting out the hood and building some aluminum ducting...it might disrupt the air flow out the fenders.

I was in a hurry to get to austin from waco and stopped for a taquito one morning and a new mustang was in the parking lot that had a nice neat vented hood right over the radiator. It looked perfect for a 914 and appeared to be a seperate grill from the hood but maybe not. i haven't found it anywhere with google though. It may have been a aftermarket hood but it was painted to match the car and I'm pretty sure it was a new mustang. I would have looked the owner up but my wife was with me and we were late as usual.

Don't like them personally. They do not function as well as other means of evacuation, and they let a lot of water into the trunk if you get caught in the rain.

you can buy pannels on ebay and bond them to the hood , cut out underneath them.. that way you wont warp the crap out of the hood like I did!! I found a guy in KY who will do my next hood to get it right..
I go up there for business.

more heat in the cockpit is likely with hood louvers my buick 914 gets enough heat as it is into the cockpit

Whichever design you choose make sure it comes out close enough to the front bumper to still be in the low-pressure zone. Those shown above are right on the transition line from low to high pressure with the highest happening at the bottom of the windshield.

VC has a good point about keeping water out of the trunk, make it utterly waterproof and windproof. Even if you keep all of the water out, wind-proofing makes for a warmer car in the winter. Here's mine, obviously without louvres, in the low pressure-zone.

It's a 3.6L six, so this is a very large oil cooler. In the winter I block off ~1/3 of it and force it into the cabin with a marine bilge-blower to get heat and defrost air.

Click to view attachment

Good luck

I am also looking at venting the radiator thru the hood on my Subaru conversion. I have the radiator mounted at ~30deg angle and I planned on making a shroud up to the hood. I don't have a windshield so I don't have to worry as much about the transition from low to high pressure.

Here is my radiator set-up.


This was my first thought, you can purchase these louvers for ~$130 each and mount them in the hood.



Here are the same ones on a BMW:



I also found these from tiger-racing.com


I would really like to get something like this and graft it into the hood.

I am interested to see what others have come up with.

-Britain

I built these for my V8. I don't get any heat in the cabin or any other air flow problems.

JerryClick to view attachment

I also have thought about mounting a Subaru reverse vent...buy I would need to see it photoshopped before I cut.



Here it is on a hood:



-Britain

my lame attempt.. not running so no report.. I'm going to redo after I run these for awhile..

46 1x4 louvers

Click to view attachment

Is that done in metal or fiberglass?

-Britain

Check any hot rod shops around. Those guys will know someone who does all metal louvers. I have seen a few guys here that do it, but you aren't in LA and shipping a hood wouldn't be cheap. You would be best off to find someone local.

Louvers were done in fiberglass,hood is metal.

Jerry

Did you guys fabricate the louvers or purchase them and graft them into the hood? They look very nice.

-Britain

Be careful buying the siebon products my son had a bad experience with their suby hood. It's not show quality and they shipped a broke hood. We think it was all they had and composites were hard to come by when it happened. It was in 05 I think. Try to repair broke cf and keep the clearcoat from showing the repair.

I watched a show last night on the C6R, I want a hood like this for my car...just the center section.

Here are some cool pictures from some diecast models on how they did the hood.

Louvers:




Louvers and Hood Vent:




Just Hood Vent:

The hood on the Gambella Carrera GT would work as well.



It has a nice lip on the front.

I have seen a neato radiator hot air exit from under teh car, Philip haun has one on his "blue Thunder" 914. it is really cool, and no cut up hood nor wheel wells, worth checking out, he has a webpage for it, just search for "blue thunder 914" it is a buick V6 powered car.

Who's air dam/splitter is this? I like!

I also run the buick 215, slightly massaged and its not an issue as much. I just want to make it run cool as possible.

Now I like this, nice work, so you made a sort of "tunnel ram" for the air going into the cooler?

If you need louvres punched , Ukle Al can do 2?-3-4-5-6 inch widths and is decent priced.
He used to live up the street now he lives in the sunshine, I shipped these to him ,he punched and returned them in a week. Good Ole Dude.
http://www.unklals.com/

Phone: 928.704.UNKL (8655)
Fax: 928.704.9106
Email: al@unklals.com
Mailing Address: (USMail only)

Unkl Al's Custom Emporium
P.O. Box 21595
Bullhead City, AZ
86439

Thanks and yes. Airflow from the oval bumper grill is completely controlled into the cooler and sealed in ductwork all the way to the outlet in the hood. If you leave any gap behind the bumper for air pressure to escape it will. My original concept drawing had the outlet much like the Corvette above, farther back on the hood. But when I drew-in the 15-gallon fuel cell it was always in the way. So I had to make the ductwork come up to the hood steeply. Turns out that's a much better place to vent anyway because of the neg. pressure there. If you look at the latest 911's that vent their air on top, the outlets are not only small, but even farther forward than mine.

I was always told you need twice the exhaust opening size as the intake size for proper airflow. Don't know for a fact, but it's always worked for me.

That's an interesting discussion all by itself since the airflow through the cooler/radiator changes all the time with the speed of the car. I've not gone back to do any heat-transfer calculations but back when I first started designing this car, I was told by some racers that it was supposed to be a 1:8 inlet to outlet ratio (smaller exit than inlet). That was to slow the air and give it enough time to absorb the heat as it's heat capacity is really not good. That all changes when you add fans and I didn't want to do that. So I made the exit slightly larger than the inlet and was planning on regulating the exit size by blocking it off. But the darned thing worked fine, so I just never did.

Over time I've found that this non-fan installation works great in the winter, but needs another auxiliary cooler in the rear of the car during the summer months. So I leave that in now that I take some heat for the cockpit from the front cooler.

Can anyone photoshop the Corvette hood or the Gambella hood on a 914?



-Britain

no one able to do this?

This isn't a corvette..
but I built this about 15 years ago for one of my teeners..
its "fairly" water tight
has aluminum ducting inside of the trunk
all metal:

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