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Above left are the fabricated struts that hold the front of the splitter and bolt to the fabricated push bar behind the bumper cover. These are adjustable in length and made from aluminum tubing and steel threaded eye ends. They have been weight tested and also proven on track, don't worry. The above right picture is with the hood ducting cut and some corrugated cardboard stuffed in place, for mock-up. Then Brandon did his photoshop tricks and made the blue hood look red.
Building the hood ducting was done in the method shown above. We looked at other ways, and even attempted to weld on the aluminum sheet that the OEM hood is made of. welding was a major chore so we went with rivets. The aluminum side panels have small angle pieces riveted to them and to the hood, and he structure is actually stronger than before due to the boxed shape of the two ducts.
How big are the ducts, and why didn't we just "buy a Tiger Racing hood!", like so many people suggested? Well, as you can see, a human head will fit through the duct openings, so they are bigger than anything we've seen out there. The drop on the ducting is also very deep, unlike any off the shelf hood we have found for the S197. This drop was only possible by moving the coolant reservoir and factory routing of the cold-air inlet to the middle and going over the radiator support.
THIS was why we did all of that work. The TR hood also has the ducts in less than ideal placement, in my humble opinion, moving from a low presure (forward) to high pressure zone back by near the windshield. It is also $1500+ for a composite hood that is prone to cracking, and a real bear to paint (according to a body shop I talked to that has done a half dozen), whereas this is a $300 used aluminum OEM hood with just "some fab hours" into it.
It is still light and yet strong enough to work for years without cracking. Mostly it allowed us to make the ducting as deep as we wanted in where we wanted, instead of being stuck with an aftermarket composite hood's shape and layout.
As you can see above, Ryan added some epoxy seam sealer to the edges of the hood openings where the sheets of aluminum met. Again, welding this OEM material proved problematic, so we went with rivets and panel bonding epoxy on everything. It is air tight and STRONG. The ducts are BIG, placed in the correct low pressure areas (in theory), and they drop WAY down and grab air from the now uncovered back of the radiator, with more flow pushed upwards from the waterfall deflector. This hood ducting combined with the
massive splitter we fabricated should produce significantly more front downforce than the LS splitter we used before, even at low speeds. In theory. Neither Jason nor I are aero engineers, but our mechanical engineering backgrounds aren't from another planet, either. We also know some smart aero guys who gave us a lot of tips.
We never got a good picture with the bumper cover off of the new "Corvette style" air cleaner installed onto the end of our fabricated aluminum intake tube, and now that is all buried under the front end and I don't want to pull it all apart for a pic. Above are a couple of pictures with the clear cellophane still on the air cleaner, but mounted in place. Removing the big, bulky factory bumper beam and foam crash structure and replacing it with the fabricated 1.75" x .120" wall DOM tube allowed a lot of extra SPACE for the rather large air cleaner to sit and draw air from. It is up out of the air stream with just the carbon fiber "lid" visible from the grill opening. It might get a tiny bit of extra airflow from some "ram air" effect, but I doubt it will be noticeable (it wasn't on track). That wasn't the intent of the new intake tube routing and air cleaner location - it was all about making room behind the radiator for the new hood ducting's surface area.
In order to leave as much room behind the radiator for more surface area on the hood, to allow more flow through the ducting, we ditched the OEM electric fan and shroud. Why? The stock fan shroud was VERY THICK (4" or more), and it was also sealed to the entire back surface of the radiator. This is a good thing on a 100% street car with stock grill and stock radiator, as it allows the fan to suck air from the full back surface of the radiator and not just the round area that the fan blade covers. We aren't as concerned about stop and go traffic driving
as much now, and once you are up to speed (45 mph or so) on track the "free flow" across the radiator makes the electric fan irrelevant - and in fact, the shroud can
restrict free flow at speed. So we added a slim aftermarket 16" diameter electric fan without a shroud. This mounts to the Mishimoto's upper and lower flanges with custom aluminum brackets Olof fabbed up. We have it tied into the factory wiring harness and it functions just like the stock fan (computer controlled). When Ed and I ran the car Friday night to burp the new coolant system (filled with distilled water), the engine idled for about 20 minutes and the fan came on 2 times for about 30 seconds. Trust me, it
moves some air. You can feel it sucking in on the front of the radiator and also blowing hard up from the waterfall deflector. We had to wait for the track test to see if the ducting work would pay off with adequate cooling, seeing that we blocked off over half of the grill opening area. We were warned by countless Mustang folks watching the pics on FB that it would overheat and melt the block like the core of the earth, too.
Another area we wanted to improve was the oil / air separator system. We have been using the JLT for over 2 years, and had upgraded their normal kit to have a real mounting bracket (we fabbed) and real metal fittings and lines (the JLT kit comes with plastic bits that eventually crack/leak). It was OK but the kit we had only drew crankcase pressure from one cylinder head - the passenger side. I picked up the can from a Moroso kit a while back and used it in a new system we built. This larger Moroso oil / air separator draws from both valve covers, into the separator, with a vacuum source on the other side of the can. We were pressed for time and simply used 5/8" heater hose for the lines with Norma clamps crimped at each end. We set-up the Moroso can using fittings with hose barb ends that we put together and mounted to the firewall with the included mounting bracket. I hoped the heater hose could take suction without collapsing (it doesn't!), but we had the track test to check that out at.
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