Attached the ductwork and been driving the car… yeah, yeah, I know, “about time”. Driving the car, three things have improved, which more or less should have been expected:
Air turbulence in the passenger compartment has been reduced by about half! Of course, starting out with “category 5 hurricane winds” means there’s still Category 1 winds (half as fast – I looked it up), a very welcome improvement. From previous reading, a lot of wind whips around the sides of the flat windscreen and smacks the driver about the ears – it sure does and it’s the nature of Lotus Seven type cars. I think the ductwork is keeping air from spilling over the top of the windscreen, and that lack of low pressure means it’s not sucking in as much air from the sides.
Air intake temperature is measured at the intercooler outlet and is staying right at ambient temperature. Since I don’t have a second sensor upstream of the intercooler, I can’t say how well the ducting is working. Street traffic being what it is, I can’t keep boost high enough and long enough to try and drive up air inlet temperature. I’d be well over 100mph in seconds… “first-world problems” of having a fast car.
Lastly, when driving west into the setting sun, the new “roof” is nice because it blocks the sun from coming in just abover the windscreen frame and trying to blind me.
With the hottest part of the year behind us, I’ll be doing more street driving. Full disclosure: ever since I blew up the engine, I’ve been very gun-shy about putting the car back on on-track. While everyone’s quick to say that I should, no one’s taken me up on my offer of writing me a $10,000 check, which I’d only cash if the engine blows up. In other words, it’s easy to tell someone else to do something which might cost a lot of money if it goes wrong. It wasn’t just the money though, it was the labor, and perhaps worse, being left not knowing what the “smoking gun” was that caused it to break the first time. All I know for sure was that the oiling system was not at fault because the bearings looked great – but everything else is a big unknown. What I still plan to do is eat my pride and take the car in to be professionally tuned – or at least have them review what I have. One reason I’ve been putting it off – besides not driving the car in general – is that they said they’d “probably” need the car for two days. Given that the tuner is around 100 miles away in terrible Los Angeles traffic, I much rather have it done in one day, but it’s not really up to me. We’ll see.