I'm sure anyone with an airdam (i.e air deflector/ radiator baffle) has noticed that over time after parking over curbs, the air dam seems to bend backward. I'm not sure what they look like brand new, but it seems that when the air hits mine, its like hitting a wall that runs straight up and down and angled a little backward so that some air hits it and is directed into the engine and some of it hits and passes under the car.

I went to home depot and got some aluminum flashing (thin metal used mostly for roofing, I guess). I cut a piece the width of the airdam. Took the air dam off, bend the flashing over the top so the screws that hold the airdam would also hold the flashing, and then bend it down in front of the airdam and screwed it into place. Then I took the bottom 2 inches or so of flashing that run the width of the airdam and bent it forward to get more of an 'airscoop' effect.

Works great. But now instead of hearing plastic when I hit a low dip, its scraping aluminum. Kind of annoying, but it works better than the old setup.

 

whats the temp decrease? sounds like a good idea...running noticably cooler??? degrees please

 

yeah on my iroc-z me and my grandfather made an aluminum airdam worked great, it really pushed the air up into the rad!!

 

One of the Ede's here did the same thing.
I found somthing a little better than metal. I nabbed an air baffel from a 91 Deville "wraparound style." The bottem defelector piece is set back an inch to prevent deformation. the thing actually looks good too.

 

Matthew,
I just finished describing a similar mod I made to my dam. Here's the explanation:

Here's another possible mod which might help the air dam scoop up air. Mine was getting pushed back a little and I didn't think I could keep it angled forward. I didn't want to make it longer, for obvious reasons, so I added a "lip" to the bottom edge to help prevent scooped up air from rolling off the bottom instead of going up.
I went to a hardware store (Menards) and found some rubber stair protectors which are mounted on the edges of steps to cover the hard edge. It was cheap and I only needed one. Each leg of the piece was about 1+ inches wide. It looked like this:
|
L__

It screwed easily onto the bottom edge of the air dam with 3 screws. I used bolts and lock washers too so the screws wouldn't loosen. It's nearly invisible.

Another option if you want to make the dam a little longer w/o the lip piece, is to look for some cheap rubber moulding like goes around a room at the intersection of walls and floor (baseboards?). These can be 4 or more inches wide. They are also more flexible than the air dam itself so it'll "give" if it hits something.
Good luck,
Jim.

 

The air damn's purpose isn't to scoop up air. It is only to create a low pressure area behind the radiator. It is flimsy so that it gives when you hit something and also because the faster you are going the less it is needed and it can bend back reducing wind drag and lift.

With that said, mine is made of thin sheet metal slightly shorter than the original (and probably less flexible). I only have to turn my fan on in city traffic or super hot days, but I hate that scraping sound of the metal on pavement (really gets the attention of nearby people).

 

I disagree. When the car is moving there will naturally be lower pressure under it. If the dam is missing or angled backwards, this low pressure below the rad can pull air backwards through the rad so you actually have hot under-hood air going through the rad. I'm sure it's the high pressure formed in front of the dam that pushes air up through the rad. All new dams I've ever seen were angled forward. There's basically no difference between the natural high pressure formed in front of the front bumper before it flows over the hood and that formed in front of the similarly vertical air dam.

I recently spoke with a guy who had removed the rubber strip along the rear edge of his hood. He thought the engine could suck cool air under the hood that way. Instead, he got hot air coming in through the car's air vents. I explained to him that as air gets pushed through the rad, it mostly goes up and back looking for a way out. In this case it found its way into his vents. He replaced the rubber seal on the rear edge of the hood and the hot air went away.

Jim.

 

You're welcome to disagree. I bet you'll change your view once you research this some more.

 

Eric is right. The bafle is supposed to create a low pressure area so the fan can pull in incoming air. It's not supposed to ramp the air into the radiator. If the air is forced into the nose it will create a high pressure zone instead of low pressure zone making the cooling fan useless.
I discovered this when I was making my baffle, I first started making a ramp type "scoop" similar to the one found on a Camaro just angled more like you guys are doing. It did work but on occasion the car would still get warm on the highway. With the baffle from the deville with the inset lip it creates a better low pressure zone and the car wont get a tick over 190* in 100* weather.

 

So if there's not supposed to be a high pressure area in front of the rad, why do all the cars with a front grill and no air dam work????
Answer: they don't need the air dam because of the high pressure air rushing in through the front grill. Without a grill, the only place for air to come from is underneath.

 

well..as we all know, driving through 20 red lights in 90+ weather is different than highway (as far as temps go). On the highway, since I've angled the deflector, I don't get above 160. Maybe this is no big deal for some of you, but in my situation it has helped out. And yeah, hearing that metal scrape instead of plastic is annoying, but at least its not anything expensive that I'm scraping.

Whats really helped around town has been removing my foglights. I know that the a/c thing is right there in front, but it seems to help.

I think if I ever get my fans hooked up properly I won't have to worry about round the town activity.

And as far as the pressures go, I think that (don't know if this is right) the fans create an air flow direction toward the engine, thus creating negative pressure behind them (i.e in front of the radiator). So with the scoop, if anything I'm just displacing more hot air with more cooler air for the fans to suck through. Who knows. All I know is that I cool off much faster after sitting at the red lights.

 

ttt

 

can someone post a pic of what this looks like ?? im actually considereding do this .

thanks

 

well i would but i have two problems, i wrecked the car and i dont have a digital!!

 

I have the crapiest digicam available and after the beating its taken on low dips (instead of the plastic airdam) you'd look at at and say what the fu(k?

So...I'll try to take a pic. But in the meantime. Go to home dept / lowes and buy aluminum "flashing". Be creative in the part where you get it to stay on. And then once it is wrapped around and hanging down the front of the airdeflector, just bend the lip upward to "scoop" air up.

 

ill will try that thanks for the ideas.. if you can get a pic thats great!

 

Since nobody has replied to my topic, can anybody here tell me what size is the airdam so I can make a metal one?? I don't even have one to measure. It is ripped off at the core support. Just the angle of the dam and how long it is from the core support would work wonders. I can crawl underneath and find out how wide.

 

I've recently been running into problems with my fan turning on (hence the search and finding this thread), and it gave me an idea...

a partial deflector, only on one side.

My thinking is if you can get one that angles directly into 1 side of the fan (the positive wire side, that way the fan will spin the same way) it will turn it like a windmill.

This means that at low temp, or even on highway your car will run much cooler and the fan will never need to turn on by the fan switch because it's just a free floating fan that can turn.

With the current baffle it hits all sides of the fan and stays neutral, but if you can direct all air into one side of the blade it will hit and cause it to spin.

Does anyone know if this will do any damage to the fan motor, the repetitive spinning of the fan while it is not in operation... if it doesn't this could be a new mod that would negate the need to need to manually turn on fans with wired switches going to the fan relays (I'm too lazy and forgetfull to do hook up the fan manually).

Lemme know,
Jm

 

It sounds to me like you want the airflow to turn the fan like water turns a paddlewheel. With the fan though it doesn't matter where the air hits it because every blade is angled properly to make it turn when air hits it anywhere from the front. You compare it to a windmill, yet windmills don't require the wind to hit only half of their blades because each is angled properly.
You are on the right track though about the amount of drag being less for a freely rotating fan vs one that can't turn in the airflow.
If the fan motor doesn't lock it into position when turned off (& I doubt it would) then having the fan rotate freely should not hurt the motor. If for some reason the fan can't turn freely, the airflow will not be strong enough to force it to turn, so again, nothing will happen to the motor.
Keep coming up with ideas though. I'm the same way, always looking for a better way to do something. At the very least, you'll get a better understanding of just why things operate as they do.
Jim.

 

Yes, a paddlewheel... I couldn't think of anything other than a windmill and I figured it'd be good enough of a visual image of what I was trying to say. A house near us uses one for all his power, that's why it was the only thing I could think of.

Anyway, yes, the less drag, or all the air hitting one side of the fan, would spin it faster instead of the two sides getting air fighting for the rotation. An interesting thing I learned is that the fan can spin either way when you hook it up manually, if you put the positive on the right it spins clockwise, if you put the negative on the right it spins counter-clockwise.

The motor will not 'stall' when not on because the air baffle must spin the fan at least a little bit like when on the highway.

Example:
......>X<...
|__________| (Regular baffle)

The above baffle both sides of the fan (the >X< where the "X" is the motor and the angles are the blades) the fan will all air equally.

......>X<...
/~~~~~~~' '~~\ (the 'modified' one)

Wheras here only the second fan blade "<" will get all the air and spin freely counter-clockwise. The ~~~'s could be like a dam that pushes the air to the fan blade, or you can just make a small 1 foot baffle directly under the blade instead.



EITHER way it should make the fan spin in one direction FASTER w/o needing to actually be on. For Dual Fan setups I'd think aiming alarge enough baffle area (maybe 3 feet long) directly in the middle would hit both fans spinning 1 clockwise (the left one) and another counter-clockwise (the right one).

The only thing that may be bad is that when it kicks in one will have to stop and 'jerk' into the opposite directions (causing grinding) unless you switch its relay plug.

Just an idea.

Jm

 

Theoretically, your method can spin the fans if they have low enough friction and if you can direct the air accurately enough and if you can drive fast enough to give a strong airflow.
Consider this. If it takes say 100 CFM of airflow hitting the total area of all the fan blades to create enough force to turn the fan, what's going to happen if you only direct the air at 1/2 of the fan's area? What'll happen is the 100 CFM airflow now can only supply 1/2 of the force, so the fan may not turn. To get enough air presssure to spin the blades, you'd need 200 CFM of airflow pushing on half of the fan blades. Also, I don't think there's any way you could direct the airflow so accurately without slowing it down too much. There's not enough space to put all the required baffles.
I think what will happen is that since the radiator will be getting much less airflow it won't be able to cool the engine nearly enough and the temp will skyrocket. At low speeds the fan(s) pull air through the radiator for cooling. At high speeds (over 40 mph, or something) the fans can't pull enough air to carry away all the heat the engine is producing so they shut off and 100% of the cooling air has to come from whatever can be scooped up by the air dam below the radiator. If you interfere with the flow as much as you plan to there will not be enough airflow to cool the engine. These cars tend to run hot and many people who have their air dams in place and unobstructed still have trouble staying at the recommended operating temp regardless of what they do. You can consider yourself lucky that you can apparently stay at an acceptable temp so easily.

 

i was under a 4th gen the other day.. and i noticed ths air dam looked liked this.. kinda wierd compared to ours.. it doesn't have a scooping look to it.. but it has to work..

 

Well if you're like me and don't use A/C take the condenser out and you'll be suprised how much cooler you'll run. I've removed every A/C component in my car.

 

from what i understood from some of you is that you dont want the scooping effect for your air dam due to a poor air flow from hot air not being able to escape and exiting out of the entry way or back through the radiator? well what if you made a scooping air dam and also set up a duct at the upper back part of the engine compartment that vented the hot air out now where that duct would exit not to sure didnt think that far into it yet. although if you had those air vents that are built into the fender you could have it exit there or even the cowl on your hood if you equiped your car with that. just a W.A.G not to sure if it would work but it's my idea so it sounded dam good at the time.

 

better yet get a GTA hood it already has the hot air vents installed

 

Recently, on one of these forums, Someone wrote that they removed the rubber strip along the back edge of the hood that normally seals that area. They then noticed that warm air was coming into the car from the air vents in the dash. It was my opinion that warm air from under the hood was finding its way out along the back edge of the hood and was being blown into the air vents which also have their openings in the same area along the base of the windshield.