I'm going to Buttonwillow in a couple weeks and want to get a CF vented hood before I go.

Which Seibon (or other brand) hood performs the best in terms of reducing engine temps?

I did do some searching, but all I found was "this one looks cool" or "I like the way this one looks better"...I'm not interested in what they look like...I just want my car to run cooler for summer track days (last summer she spilled her coolant all over herself at Streets of Willow).

At this time I do not want to get an upgraded water pump or a fan hack and I've already reduced the percentage of coolant in my radiator, etc...

Please give me your opinions on a good CF hood if you have the time.

 

i didn't notice much change with the ks style.

when driving, the air is vented from the engine bay even with the oem hood. so temps are going to be basically the same unless the vents work against the vehicle and disturb airflow.

at idle, I'm sure more hot air is escaping, but I don't usually do much hard driving at idle.

 

on the track it should help out alot. look up the Seibon TSII hood (R-Magic replica)

 

So you're saying a vented hood is only beneficial for stop-and-go driving?

 

Oh-oh...you're saying a vented hood IS beneficial for racing. I did look up the TSII...looks promising. Either that of the KS, I donno...

 

it's difficult to tell effectiveness of cooling system items because the cooling system is not meant to make something cool. It's only meant to cool it down to a point then STOP cooling.

So to describe how well your radiator works, or your vented hood works, you'd need to say something like "I went from 230F down to 190F in 25 seconds before the mod, and it took 13 seconds after the mod"

Since it's difficult to make a repeatable test in a controlled environment, what some people do (like for water wetter) is to run a car on a dyno at a specific engine rpm and see where the coolant temp settles at after an hour. Then repeat the test with the modification and see where the temp settles after another hour. It's all too easy to fudge the results, so any manufacturer's claims are usually discounted as being tainted.

 

Thought this over and I figure it's a waste of money since nobody's chimed in saying how much temps dropped cause of their vented hood.

Gonna go with a BHR radiator instead.

 

that's what i'm going to be doing first. BHR radiator and Mazmart REmedy water pump. start with those first...

 

I got the mazmart water pump because Jeff said it worked well on his car.

Honestly I can't tell if it's doing anything. But like I said, this is going to be true for most cooling products. If it works 2% better or 10% better, it's not something you can tell if it's working better than before by glancing at a gauge. It's an overall thing that happens only when the fans are on and pulling down the temps. For all you know, your car might be 230F and heat soaked, and with oem hardware your car might stay that way, but with a better radiator and water pump, it might be able to eventually cool down...

 

underhood temps on the track have never been a concern for us ga boys --even in a 10%F w/e at Road Atlanta the engine bay did ok. the alternator got really hot
Stop and go seems to be the environment where concern is voiced.
One guy took his hood off and it did not make a difference. Go figure.
olddragger

 

I do my hardest driving at idle.

I patiently wait for the green and I imagine my car taking off like the space shuttle. Flying out the hole going 0 to Mach3 in 6 seconds. Flying by all the piston powered vehicles and melting them as I fly by. All of them saying it must be his Seibon TS Carbon Fiber Vented Hood. Waving as I pass by.

Then I hear honking wake back up out of my day dream and realize they weren't waving but shooting me the bird.

 

The Seibon TSII has alot of vents.
It is also important to unblock the back side of the radiator and to make sure that there is no openings around the rad that will allow the air to bypass the rad.

 

Venting the hood may actually cause greater heat, depending on high pressure/low pressure areas effecting air flow and other variables...fact is, unless the designer of any of these products (ex higher thermal capacity radiators with correctly engineered flow) has access to all factory data and real engineering capability, they can easily do more harm than good...plus, the stock hood is already very light, so adding an aftermarket hood may just be buying more weight, high and up front...

For a NA, stock motor car, probably going to pure water with Water Wetter is all that you'd ever need for track days...but, that's based on my experience tracking and road racing a bunch of other cars, I've never run my RX8 in anything other than autocross, as far as more severe duty...

 

Taking the hood completely off doesn't seem to do anything, so a vented hood is only going to be as good as whatever else you do in the engine bay to redirect heat.

 

^^^ and how do you kno THAT???

***queues up Easy's entrance music***

 

It's entirely possible that removing the hood, in certain circumstances, could lead to higher temps, if it caused air to be trapped in the low pressure area behind the radiator and "recycled"...we went through all of this with my Sunbeam Tiger, when it was being used for vintage and track events...the car ended up running cooler with just two vents at the back side of the hood than it did with a Cobra style hood scoop and rear vents, due to pressure build trapping air and not allowing good flow through. It also ended up being very beneficial to block two areas which allowed air under the hood from the sides of the radiator...counter intuitive, but focussing air flow through the radiator, using the low pressure area behind the radiator to full advantage, was important. Of course, I'm talking about a 40 year old car, with a big V8, that was a kluge when originally built, so there's no surprise that there was room for improvement...question is: in a car so thoroughly engineered as the '8, do you really think that you're going to improve air flow and evacuation of heat from underhood using off the shelf, aftermarket stuff?