At
the
top and sides of the windshield frame I removed the plastic Sun
visors
and wind deflectors because they seemed to always be in the way.
The hood scoop let's in air that is much cooler than the air coming out of the radiator.
Just to the outside of the vertical bumpers are two air inlets. On this car they are routed to the foot wells and have a flap valve. Since there is no air conditioning, the cool outside air is very welcome in the summer. On racing cars the air from these is directed to the front brakes and the driver literally has hot feet.
The factory electric motor and fan were just behind the horizontal air driver plate and are just out of sight in this photo.
From the factory the front license plate is mounted on a hinge. The idea was when the car is going fast it would lean back and thereby not keep the air from getting into the radiator. I have tightened up the mechanism so that it stays back all the time. In the summer if the speed is below about 35 MPH the engine will quickly get to boiling temperature and soon will be to hot to drive. The simple electric fan now on the car can not keep it cool. When I get a Round Tuit I will install a flat RV style fan that I have been told will make a big difference.
Behind the license plate you can see the two oil cooler fittings and the oil cooler just below the license plate in the stock location for it.
The two 4" diameter frame tubes can be seen just outside the body work that holds the oil cooler and the front sway bar is also visible on both sides of the car.
I ordered both the front and rear sway bars, but they said that if I wanted the normal exhaust (i.e. not the side pipes) then there was no room for the rear sway bar. I opted to keep the normal exhaust and loose the rear sway bar. The problem with this is that the car understeers, unless of course, you give it more gas then care is needed to prevent violent overseer.
There is something that is also visible, the air between the frame rails and the ground. You will notice that there is very little of it. It's called almost no ground clearance. A speed bump that is more that a few inches requires careful driving and maybe some 2x4 lumber to get across.
Although you can not see it the lower front ball joints are "upside down" from normal passenger car practice. In a normal car the pin from the lower ball joint points down and the all of of the top surface carries the weight at that corner of the car. In this car the pin points up so that there is only an eight of an inch circle of the joint that is holding the weight. This was done so that the ball joint could be placed inside of the wheel rim. Now a line drawn from the upper to lower ball joint and extended until it touches the ground will go through the center of the tire contact patch. This provides better steering geometry. The problem was that, at first, there was no provision to grease the lower ball joints and on some cars they failed causing the front wheel to fall out of the wheel well. I added a new version of the lower cap that has a grease fitting. Also when it is wearing the effort to steer goes up noticeably.
Brooke's home page, Vehicles page, CSX3282