Any interest in hood vents?

[LAWLence]

Due to the popularity of the E46 vents, I'm happy to announce the availability of the long awaited E36 coupe versions! Dozens of people have bought the E46 vents, and some E36 guys have been requesting that I produce these for the E36. These are designed with the chiseled lines of the E36 in mind. They install the same way the E46 pieces do and will come with cutting templates, installation instructions, and installation hardware.

These vents will help increase front downforce, increase cooling efficiency, and because the stock hood is made of stamped steel, reduce the weight over the nose by over 2lbs while maintaining structural rigidity. The slat design has been tested to 150mph with no signs of deflection.

There is some flexibility in placement with the E36 design, but the sweet spot will be somewhere between 12-18" from the front edge of the hood with slight more downforce/cooling benefit skewed towards an installation closer to the lower end of the scale.

Your setup may vary -- if you have a cold air intake box or ram air headlight blank like the car pictured below, you will want to move the vents further back to prevent venting beneficial high pressure air by the intake. Aesthetically, I think somewhere between 14-16" back from the hood looks pretty good and centers the vents over the front wheel arches.

The vents are CAD designed and CNC cut from 6061 T6 .063 aluminum sheet. The vents ship flat and unfinished. You can paint, wrap, or even anodize them for your desired finish. I'm not affiliated with any company -- they're cut in my own home CNC setup and are priced accordingly.

Please have a look at the E46 thread over at M3Forum here to get an idea of how to install them.


Mock up



Placed further back



Installation



Rivets hold the vent in place, and the vents conform to the curvature of the hood.



Vents will come in unfinished bare aluminum. I can't guarantee the aluminum will be perfect -- it's cut from a large sheet that often gets very light scratches from transport / storage from the supplier. There may be stamped markings as well, so I recommend finishing them.


Package includes:
- Hood Vents
- Detailed installation instructions installation
- Cutting templates
- Black anodized aluminum rivets


$129 + $15 shipping to Continental US.

Please add 3% or send funds as gift to cover PayPal fees. For shipments to Illinois, please add sales tax of 8.25% ($10.31). Make sure to include your shipping address.

Please inquire about international shipping.

Paypal is lyuen368@gmail.com.

Orders will go out in the order received. Lead time is less than 1 week from order date.

Feel free to reply or PM me with any questions.

[blckstrm]

I think these look great! I'm not ready to do this today, but this is something I've been trying to find a solution for - and this looks like the right solution.

I DD my M3, so I'm a little wary of the water ingress issue - especially with some of the deluges we've had the last year. But when summer temps get above 110 my coolant hovers near 220 when I'm cruising on the freeway, so I think this is something I need to do. And most track days in Texas involve at least one mid-session cool-down lap.

I need to source a hood and do this when my off-season rolls around (my off season is in the middle of the summer).

[LAWLence]

Luckily these vents are not located over any sensitive electronics. The are more or less directly over and in front of the shock towers, so the only thing you have there is the windshield washer reservoir and the cruise control module which is a weather sealed unit. For those with a cold air intake, you'll want to install the vents a little further back to prevent water ingress.

[LAWLence]

bumping this, thanks for the interest from the people who have contacted me!

[flyfishvt]

Those are some pretty big performance claims. Show us the testing documentation supporting those claims.

[MisterM52]

Good Work bringing this out for us, I was looking for something like this about a year or more ago.

Now what kind of cooling benefits has been noted on this, the american endurance racing race car used some vents, I was thinking we may want to try these for our TVS2300 or Eaton M122H Build, on one side though.

Keep up the good work.

[LAWLence]

On my personal car, oil temps dropped by about 10F and water temps by about 15F on a 75 degree day. Note that I have removed the front aux fan and A/C condenser, so those values may vary depending on your specific configuration.

There was a marked increase in front downforce (most notably at the Kink at Road America. I was able to gain 3mph through the apex whereas the car would push before. 125mph corner in my car).

[rathersmart]

sent you PM

[TipsyMcStagger]

To the OP;

If you're not going to pay for a Photobucket account, you should upload your images directly to the forum.

[LAWLence]

It's a bit tough when I have literally thousands of images across hundreds of threads across the Web! Photobucket broke the internet unfortunately. Thanks for uploading those!

To the OP;

If you're not going to pay for a Photobucket account, you should upload your images directly to the forum.

- - - Updated - - -

Some pics showing sedan fitment:
Untitled by Lawrence Yuen, on Flickr

Untitled by Lawrence Yuen, on Flickr

[Butters Stoch]

I want

[LAWLence]

You can have! PM me

[ColtonBH]

Testing on Road America? Are you in Wi? That's a great track

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[LAWLence]

Northern IL. I try to make it out there at least a couple weekends per year. Beautiful track and town!

[VRT]

Interested in a set for my car. I have a ram air headlight like the car pictured above. How far back would you recommend placing the vents to keep the high pressure air near the intake. Would approximately 16" be the sweet spot?

[Hallatauer]

Also interested but will have to wait a few weeks...my present search is for a new motor... blew up my S52 at COTA this summer. Once I get that sorted then I'll PM you on vents.

[LAWLence]

Interested in a set for my car. I have a ram air headlight like the car pictured above. How far back would you recommend placing the vents to keep the high pressure air near the intake. Would approximately 16" be the sweet spot?

It would really depend on how your shielding for the ram air is set up. On the gray race car, we put it far enough back such that the vents did not vent any high pressure air from the intake area. The intake filter was in a sealed compartment.

Also interested but will have to wait a few weeks...my present search is for a new motor... blew up my S52 at COTA this summer. Once I get that sorted then I'll PM you on vents.

Thanks, look forward to hearing from you!

[LAWLence]

Bumping this

[Deus Ex Machina]

Those look pretty good.

My concern would be water ingress from rain. I actually have a real carbon hood with NACA type ducts farther toward the front. I have yet to paint it to match my car and install it, I will likely buy the plastic hexacomb grill material, back it with sheeting covered with texturized rubber, and seal it all off with aluminum ductwork tape. It will look right but be sealed to the weather. I don't race.