~ Scott,
~ <A thought: Wonder how it would look to get those little chrome ovals
~ that show up at the back of the MGA's engine bay and fit *them* to
~ the rear of the B's bonnet?>
~
~ Well, the little chrome MGA ovals might look cool and they might help
~ an MGB run cool, but might also confuse folks who read *MGA* on them.
Compared to cutting the holes, that's easy to fix; get the MGB chrome
trim from the rear deck lid, grind off the MGA from the original, drill
a couple of holes and add some Rivnuts and you're done. As Bob Bownes'
machine shop said, "If you can't improvise, we can't use you." :-)
~ BTW, they're not located properly on MGA's and don't aid under-bonnet
~ cooling at all! Louvers in the rear of the bonnet help to cool an MGA.
As an interim solution, racers used to adjust the bonnet so that the
rear edge (on Bs, anyway) was 1" or so up from the cowl to provide a
path for hot air to escape. Of course, given that this is typically
a high-pressure area on a street car (the windshield causes air to
pile up underneath it), it might not work as well as it did on race
cars with teeny little crescent-moon windscreens just in front of
the driver, where the air passing over the bonnet would drop in
pressure and suck out the hot engine-compartment air. Louvers on
the roundest part of the bonnet, but behind the radiator shroud,
are the surest way to go, though I wonder also about putting vents
essentially under the chrome trim strips on the side fenders,
above the level of the footbox, as on an Aston Martin and on the
factory race-rally Austin-Healeys.
I'm still working on the little MGA ovals, though. We could put
in a row of three or four on each side, like either an early
Ferrari or a '58 Oldsmobile. Hey TeriAnn, you listening? :-)
--Scott "Some people give up on real style so EASILY" Fisher
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