I haven't had any input yet, but I'll throw in
. I would first wonder with Jeff if you can mount the hood in both directions, for testing sake.
In
my humble opinion, having the scoop backwards would help draw hot air out. Hot air rises and would tend to accumulate at the top, so if the scoop faced forward it would force the air back down, and yes it might mix and cool a little bit, but there would still be a lot of hot air under the hood. Having it backwards would draw hot air out, and the wash of the fan would only aid in serving as an extra motive to push the air through. Bernoulli's Principle states that the higher velocity of a fluid over a surface, the lower the pressure is going to be. To me the motion of the streamers being straight back and not fluttering (technical term
) is exactly what I try to find on my sailboat, when the flow is laminar that's when you get maximum drive off the sail. I would think in this case it would be similar - the laminar flow of air across the hood creates a low pressure zone that would naturally draw air out of the engine bay if the hood were facing backward. Then arguably cooler air would be allowed in through the radiator, under the truck, etc. That's a little less than
worth, so take it for that.
Do other 80 series owners not have this problem? Are you the first one to cut your hood? If you don't get the results you want, what's a hood swap among friends?
I'm sure
some would want it if only for looks