PFF - Pennock's Fiero Forum, PDA Edition

Blooze Own: An F355 Six Speed N* Build Thread (Page 114/126)

355Fiero

OCT 13, 03:41 PM

Blooz.

I like the rad placements. A question for you though. When the wheel well covers are in place, will there be enough room behind the reads to direct the air out? Looks pretty tight on the back side of the rads for air to get out. Would angling the rads so that the inner edge is further forward help with room at the back end? the real 355 rads are also angled if I remember correctly.

Looking good
Cheers
Don

ericjon262

OCT 13, 03:42 PM

I don't know how much you plan to drive this when it's done, but are you worried about pebbles getting thrown into the radiators at all?

Bloozberry

OCT 13, 07:23 PM

quote

Originally posted by 355Fiero:
When the wheel well covers are in place, will there be enough room behind the reads to direct the air out? Looks pretty tight on the back side of the rads for air to get out. Would angling the rads so that the inner edge is further forward help with room at the back end?

The real F355 has very little room between the backside of the fans and the wheel well liner too. Here's what a real F355 looks like once the wheel well liners are removed:

On mine, the big difference between what I intend to do and the real F355 is that I'll be placing my fans upstream rather than downstream of the rads, and rather than just relying on the louvers to exhaust hot air, some of it will be redirected over the wheel too. Here's what a real F355 wheel well liner looks like:

When installed, there isn't much room between the tire and the louvers and yet it still seems to work for the Ferrari:

Hopefully the additional pathway I'm going to try to free up over the top of the wheel will improve the potential for more airflow than just the louvers.

quote

Originally posted by ericjon262:
are you worried about pebbles getting thrown into the radiators at all?

I am, somewhat, although from the above photos of the wheel liners you'll note that the openings are all angled downward. The only way a pebble could hit the radiator is if it first flew off the front of the tire, bounced off the ground and back up into the slots. I guess the real Ferrari's rad is protected by the fan cage in the event that that happened. I could put a mesh behind the radiator though I'd be worried about too much back pressure. I may have to go through some real life testing to see if it's a real concern.

Yarmouth Fiero

OCT 13, 07:58 PM

I knew that was a real Ferrari 355 hidden behind your shop Blooz... I just knew it.....

Bloozberry

OCT 18, 10:02 PM

LOL... there are more than a few interesting cars stored here.

(Actually those photos are from eBay listings).

Back in the shop, I've been slaving at designing the necessary ductwork to allow some of the radiator exhaust to flow over the rear wheels. I have to say it's been more time consuming than I had originally thought. The first step was to see if there was any way to keep some of the OEM sheet metal that shrouds the engine bay. The part I'm talking about is the metal that connects the upper and lower frame rails ahead of the rear wheels. I knew I'd have to chop out most of it on the passenger side since that's where the OEM battery location is and the sheet metal simply protrudes way too far out into area I want to install the radiator. On the driver's side, I thought I'd be able to keep most of it but in the end I decided it had way too large of a cut-out for the stock gas filler pipe and cold air intake plumbing. So I cut it out entirely to start fresh:

Here's what it looked like from the side view after the shroud was removed. It's really starting to look like Swiss cheese!

I wasted a lot of time trying to puzzle out mentally how the wheel well liner, radiator ducting, and backsplash could be integrated with the goal being to have the least number of parts, but it proved to be just too mind boggling. So I started with what I knew I needed: a backsplash for the wheel. It had to serve two purposes: close off the engine bay from road debris (as much as possible); and provide a mounting surface for the arched portion of the wheel well liner. I played around with several sheets of bristle board (accidentally trimming too much here, and leaving too much there, re-taping more cardboard everywhere) until I finally came up with a prototype template:

Being a flimsy flat sheet of paper, taping it in place left a lot to be desired in terms of holding it in position while I tried to design the other mating sheets around it. To complicate matters, the template meets up at right angles to the sheet metal it needs to be attached to on the chassis. Ever tried to hang a piece of paper vertically from the ceiling so it stays up tight against it? That's when I decided to make the template out of some thin steel sheeting I had lying around instead. This sheeting is something like 30 gauge so it's only marginally better than the bristle board, but at least it keeps its shape after being bent and formed:

So here's the metal template starting to take shape. I've purposely left extra material so it can be trimmed to accommodate the rest of the layout as it becomes clearer in mind.

The nice thing about using metal is that I can form arched right angled strips very easily on a tool called a metal shrinker and expander. Here you can see how I've made a few prototype arches which help me visualize how the wheel well liners should be shaped and how to attach them to the backsplash. They also stiffen up the backsplash considerably to boot!: