At 09:47 PM 9/2/98 -0400, Mike Razor wrote:
>What does the list think about inserting small exhaust fans in the ports
on either side of the engine compartment to assist in cooling the engine
compartment? ....
For starters, the fans wold have to be pretty big to do any good. Then you
would definitely have to swap out the generator for an alternator.
Otherwise, there may be another possible approach.
The engine itself is not much affected by high temperature. It will purr
right along pulling a heavy load at high speeds with water temerature right
to the end of the gauge. As long as you keep the water inside the cooling
system and the pressure on, it's happy.
On the other hand, the carburetors get deathly ill when they get
overheated. Idling a hot engine for several minutes while standing still
on a hot day can raise so much heat under the bonnet that the carbs go into
vapor lock. Just turning off a hot engine and letting it soak in the heat
of the exhaust manifold can produce the same results. The trick is to keep
the carburetors cool, not the whole engine.
To that end, you need to provide a flow of cool air around the carbs. If
you try to do that by exhausting the hot air, you have to vent quite a lot
of it in order to draw in sufficient cool air to displace it and lower the
under bonnet temps. It would be much easier to direct a flow of cool air
directly at the carbs and ignore the rest of the engine bay. The 4" air
induction hose at that side of the radiator cowling is a vallient effort in
that direction, but does little for cool air flow at low vehicle speeds or
when standing still. A nice little fan about the size of a heatrt blower
installed in that already existing air duct might do wonders for this
problem. Could be worth a try.
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
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