Originally Posted by
Davo
That's it exactly, getting the air out, not in. I had educate myself in this through countless hours of reading but once I realised this, then it all became easier.
The internet is swamped by threads where guys plop a scoop on a bonnet because it "looks right", and then these threads always end with something about how it "seems to work". There's very, very little showing how someone worked it out for themselves properly. One of the best threads I found had hidden in it a couple of comments from a guy with a big racing car in America, where he'd used some aftermarket radiator intake kit that rammed more air in but only pressurised the engine bay. He got rid of it and improved the engine bay air exit and it made a huge difference for him. (And this was at something like 150mph!)
That giant scoop shown above isn't going to work because it's going to allow air through the bonnet, when you want it going through the radiator. It [I]might[I] work if all that air goes straight down the back of the engine bay and creates a low pressure area behind the radiator, but because of the amount of stuff in the way and the enormous turbulence it will cause, it won't be that straightforward. More likely is that the air tries to get into the radiator, and tries to get into the engine bay through the scoop, and the poor radiator will be stuck in the middle with not enough airflow. You can get away with a lot of this when the ambient temperature is only 20c or 25c, but as you point out it all changes with an extreme heat load, towing, and so on.