Matto'85TA

Not sure if this belongs here or on another board.
Me and my buddy were talking about cars, and he asked if the vents on my hood and on the fenders were functional. He was wondering if any vents or anything of that sort were functional on thirdgens. Now I know the early cars had functional power bulges, but what about everything else? I know the front nose vents dont do anything, but i heard that the rear hood vents and the fender vents were heat extractors. Is that true? I have felt heat coming from it before. The louvers or hood blisters on camaro's werent functional were they?

Thanks,

Matt

LAFireboyd

iTrader: (3)

The rear hood vents and fender vents are open, but they don't "suck" with a vacuum. Their function of "extracting" heat comes simply because they're there. If you look through the structure of the hood and fenders, you'll see that air can flow through.

Similarly, the hood louvers are also open, so they allow air to enter. If you look at the underside of the hood below the louvers, you'll see holes through the structure that allow air to flow through. However, they don't actually open and close, so technically they're non-functional. And since the intake isn't right there anyway, the incoming air would only provide some cold air "relief" for underhood temps, pushing the hotter air out through the extractors, I guess, lol.

But a cool ram air could be made with those louvers, keeping the stock hood and look(if someone wanted to do that), by cutting away that area underneath the louvers and custom-making an intake(modifying a Camaro intake would work). Just don't take the car out in the rain, lol.

I'm not sure about Camaros though. I think the louvers on the '82 and '83 cars with the crossfire engines were functional, but I'm not sure what, if any, other years had functional louvers.