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After adding the boost maker the under hood temps were surprisingly reasonable while driving but parking it after a hard run the temps skyrocketed due to the hood trapping heat. Enough so that it’s was quite uncomfortable to touch the hood just a few minutes afterward. I was concerned about long term baking of everything, hoses, wires, etc. All of the aftermarket louvers l found look too modern and I’m not especially fond of punched louvers. Decided on a drilled & dimple-die’d vent directly above the header and turbo, somewhat mocking the shape of the header.

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Peace, Ron

I like your alternative method to promote air flow. In addition to that, this a treatment I've used to help keep the heat in the exhaust and away from all the surrounding areas:

Ron

Thanks Ron, hopefully the ceramic coatings and hood vent will keep me from having to go as all-out as you have done.

Getting close to wrapping everything up and driving the 7 again. Re-valved the front shocks, heat shielded top of radiator, finished the trial intercooler duct and nose cone vent. Remaining items on the to-do are change the oil and rotate the tires, then it’s coming off the jack stands. Weatherman is reporting sunny and 70 next weekend so a bonsai run might be in the cards.

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Peace, Ron

Beautiful work as always, Ron. Can't wait to hear your report on next weekend's bonzai run

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Cheers, Tom

My Car9 build: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=14613
"It's the construction of the car-the sheer lunacy and joy of making diverse parts come together and work as one-that counts."
Ultima Spyder, Northstar 4.0, Porsche G50/52

Nice.
If you need more on demand cooling in traffic, there are much more powerful fans available. A larger fan will fit the civic rad without overhang. I guess that is a 10 inch?

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Miata UBJ: ES-2074R('70s maz pickup)
Ford IFS viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13225&p=134742
Simple Spring select viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11815
LxWxHt
360LA 442E: 134.5x46x15
Lotus7:115x39x7.25
Tiger Avon:114x40x13.3-12.6
Champion/Book:114x42x11
Gibbs/Haynes:122x42x14
VoDou:113x44x14
McSorley 442:122x46x14
Collins 241:127x46x12

Thank you Gents. MV8 your eye is spot on, it is a 10”. So far the fan has been fine. When it runs it doesn’t have much trouble dropping the temps fairly quickly and cycles about like a typical production car in traffic. But… I’m always open to entertaining new options. What brand or model have you had good experiences with?

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Peace, Ron

I've used the derale 18212 (interchangeable with a Hayden 3812 ultracool) on a civic rad in the GO4. The best indicator of fan performance is amp draw with all the bs claims of cfm. These have 265-270w motors and pull around 22 amps on high (can be wired just for high speed). Oem, standalone electric cooling fans pull a similar amount of amps. They have a venturi frame but it is very thick at 2.6 inches.

I used the larger 16 inch version as a pusher on the aluminum '60s econoline rad in the tracker v6 build.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/der-18212#overview

IMHO, the best possible 12 inch fan to use on the civic rad.

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Miata UBJ: ES-2074R('70s maz pickup)
Ford IFS viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13225&p=134742
Simple Spring select viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11815
LxWxHt
360LA 442E: 134.5x46x15
Lotus7:115x39x7.25
Tiger Avon:114x40x13.3-12.6
Champion/Book:114x42x11
Gibbs/Haynes:122x42x14
VoDou:113x44x14
McSorley 442:122x46x14
Collins 241:127x46x12

Agreed, this has been my experience. Amp draw is a good proxy for airflow.

We’ve had a few fair weather days, enough to get the tune decently close. A couple surprises:

The intercooler temp gauge is an absolute waste. It’s so sluggish to respond as to be worthless. It’s built for aircraft and I suppose it might be fine for that application since that usage more approaches steady-state loading.

The intercooler is doing well but it’s not ‘night & day’ temp drops. That was expected as it is on the small end of the spectrum. I was also expecting it to pick up some amount of heat with its proximity to the radiator, but it’s quite a bit more than I had anticipated. Surface temp runs about 150 degrees once everything is fully warmed regardless of how lightly it’s driven. Need’s more shielding.

Turbo is running beyond its efficiency once above 10psi (running about 11.5psi currently). It’s noticeable in the fueling as the VE is dropping off notably in the map above 10. Which is perfectly fine as I’m happy to run 10psi.

The upside is the car makes great power as is and is mildly spinning the tires through 1st gear, pulling just about exactly 1G in first. Making 6psi at around 1750rpm, lag is damn near non existent. It’s the least laggy turbo car I’ve ever driven, most people wouldn’t notice it was boosted unless you told them. That’s a big win as that was the goal - I wanted drivable refined power and that’s what I got. Ridiculously easy to drive stupid fast with confidence. The deeper I get into Tuner Studio the more impressed I am. They’ve done a great job paired with the MS3 Pro. Overall drivability is quite good, just have a couple areas left to polish up and feel confident I can get there.

The cooling mods are working very very well. Previously the coolant temp would fairly quickly rise with boost. Not noticeable on the gauge but showed up in data logging. Now the temp is virtually unaffected with extended boost driving, max I’ve seen so far is about 2 degrees on long pulls.

Between the ceramics and hood vent, under hood temperatures have dropped substantially when parked after a hard run, I’d say unscientifically damn near 100 degrees.

Overall it’s coming together well and would trust it on an extended trip at this point.

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Peace, Ron

My assumption was incorrect but my suspicions were correct.

As I mentioned in the previous post I suspected the intercooler was getting heat soaked from radiator backwash. I mainly concluded this because air temps ran hot no matter how easy I drove the car - even staying below 100kpa would bring temps up to just about exactly the same as when the car was driven in anger. My original assumption when putting this together was that the hole in the nosecone would dilute the radiator air sufficiently enough to keep the radiator backwash to minor levels. That turned out to be a substantial error on my part. So, I tried an experiment and slid a piece of rubber sheet between the radiator and intercooler and went out for some testing. Intake air temps have now dropped 50+ degrees while cruising and roughly 40 under full boost! Success! This winters project will be to implement a more permanent solution.

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Peace, Ron

I use a shop local to me (Statesville, NC) that does exhaust coatings. I have my downpipe on my Volvo C30 done and after about 10 mins of shutting the car off I can touch the downpipe and its warm at best, def cooler than the cylinder head.

I had to do some rewelding on a pipe I had coated. I welded a v-band on another project and then did some welding on the pipe with coating. I could pick up the pipe with the coating long before I could touch the pipe with the v-band. It works really well. It cost me $80 to coat a 4' long downpipe.

50 degrees?!? That's impressive! All from just the rubber sheet? So even with the AL sheet keeping the hot air from the rad entering the intercooler, I'm assuming it was heating up the AL sheet therefore heating up the air in front of the intercooler? That's wild.