Hi guys,
I'd like to ask for your opinion on the rear ventilation openings.
I have no other idea of how to describe them, so to clarify what I'm talking of, here's a photo:
Foretravel (http://ft270.frbrd.com/#!album-0-1)
In my coach they have just been glued on from the outside, but there is actually no opening in the rear cap that'd let the air go through. Generally I'd think that such ventilation openings could help with engine cooling while cruising.
Anyway currently they make no sense as there're no openings for air to go through in the firberglas, so what happens is that water pools inside them - and I tend to blame this for the rotten floor in my bedroom. So I have two options and would like to hear your opinions on them:
A) Cover and seal the inlets so neither air nor water can get inside.
B) make a cutout in the rear cap in order to give those inlets a function and hope that the additional cooling airflow is worth the hassle.
So, let me know your opinions!
cheers,
Matt
Matt,
Opening an inlet behind those will DEGRADE cooling performance.
Air that aids cooling is pulled through the CAC and radiator. Air from those inlets, were they opened is BEHIND the "cooling package".
Behind the cooling package, you want as much vacuum as you can get, so air is sucked through the CAC and radiator.
Do not open them to the engine compartment!
I've got a little damage to the rear cap on my FT and hope to make it down to Xtreme in Nagodoches to have it repaired. I'm going to see if they can just remove those fake vents during the process since I can't understand what the point of them was.
Someone on the Forum posted pictures of them removed.
They are just a design detail-non-functional.
yea, I agree, I will get myself some nice aluminum pieces, paint them black and cover up those inlets.
With regards to the vacuum behind the engine, I could imagine that an airflow through those inlets into the rear cap and out the engine bay cover could actually add to the air underpressure in the engine bay, according to the scientific principle of airflow multiplication. (Dyson uses this in their bladeless fans: Bladeless fan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bladeless_fan)).
Another thought I had is that those inlets act somewhat like stabilizers when heading straight ahead. - In that case they'd have a bad influence on fuel economy though.
Here's the link to a recent discussion about the fake rear vents:
You can see what we had done at Xtreme when we had the coach repainted.
Rear side vent (http://www.foreforums.com/index.php?topic=28325.msg235439#msg235439)
Those fake vents remind me of the "hood scoops" Detroit used to add to all the pseudo "performance" cars in the late '70's and early '80's. A mean-looking scoop (that did not open into the hood) plus some clever tape stripes could transform any base model 6-cylinder car into a drag strip terror! What Foretravel had in mind is anyone's guess...
Might be a good place to add some really cool optic nerve burning LED lights pointing to the rear? Might be a whole lot less coach bucks.
These decals on the rear are probably like the fake louver decals just above the front bumper on both sides of our 91 GV. They just seem to add some balance to an otherwise bland looking area. Have a great day ---- Fritz