plastic spacers behind the bumper cover?

mmathews

Registered User
i want to make a fiberglass bumper cover. i don't like how far the bumper cover sticks out. and the lack of airflow. there are plastic spacers behind the bumper cover. i wanna remove them and kinda go straight down from the lights, so to speak, with the new one. will removing them affect the airbag? or any other components?
 
i want to make a fiberglass bumper cover. i don't like how far the bumper cover sticks out. and the lack of airflow. there are plastic spacers behind the bumper cover. i wanna remove them and kinda go straight down from the lights, so to speak, with the new one. will removing them affect the airbag? or any other components?

It's your car, but those are crush zones in case of an accident, and the air flow is fine as long as the baffles and lower chin spoiler are in place - without them you won't have a positive pressure zone in front of the radiator and a negative pressure zone under the car to help move air across the engine accordingly.

If you muck with the factory setup, you could just as easily make things worse.

Fix those first...
 
the crush zone is on the rails you'll see the ripples on the rails where they tie into the front bumper

the plastic 'absorber' is not neccessary, its purpose is to absorb impacts

theres a bunch of us that have removed the front bumper from our cars for weight reduction
 
Yeah no problem taking out the plastic or the steel bumper either. The air bag sensors mount to the core support.
 
Here's mine with everything removed and the front mount boxed in.
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Cool! Did you put anything back where the bumper was? I wanna put a fmic out there and have a full grill in front. Is there anythig i can do to the hood while i am shaping it to keep the air flowing over the engine? Any thoughts?
 
I don't have anything inplace of the bumper. All I would like to do is make some deflectors to draw the air from the upper air scoops(where the plastic deflectors were) and from the bottom up in to the IC.

Make sure you seal the rad to the IC so the air keeps going thru the rad instead of around it.

The fog lights mount to the steel bumper so if you axe the whole bumper you loose that mounting point. You also have to remount the horn if you remove the bumper.
 
Ok. Another thing i wanted to know, how do i blow air across the radiator/ic with a fan without blowing hot air from one over the other? My plan is this. The ic's i am goin with is 28x7x4 deep. I am gonna run my ic tubes out where my stock ic is. Outlet pipe into the top ic, out 180° into the lower ic, then back into the engine compartment. I can mount the ic's as low as possible and run 2 small fans across the top of the radiator. Would that be enough for say 90° in traffic? I can integrate an aluminum housing so that all air that enters the grill passes through. Should i open the cow by the windshield? And close off the under side? I thought i saw that on the mustang. Thanks!
 
You have to be very careful how you modify everything in regards to air flow. You are going to modify the entire front end which changes all the air flow patterns in which Ford intended, which means all the pressure points they considered in the design are gone, and opening the hood up top could end up with no pressure differential across your IC and rad therefore no cooling. Contrary to popular belief, the Ford engineers knew what they where doing, and they created a car with a very low drag coefficient, that your going to lose out on flattening up the nose section like you are suggesting.

You have to maintain a high pressure zone in front of the rad support, and a low pressure zone behind the rad so air flows.

Frankly, your going to way too much work, and creating a safety issue for youself to boot (I shudder to think what'll happen to you and the person you hit in a front end collision). I've installed a delta fin IC that has a 12x24x3 core that flows across the way so I bring the heated air to the pax side, flow it into the IC and and the cooled air from the drivers side goes back up. I am running the MPX blower which has 350F+ outlet temps and I'm only seeing about 40F increase above start temps when I run the car hard continuously (way more than 1/4 mile sprints).

Datalogs and calculations are showing the IC to be about 83% efficient and I'm only seeing a 0.3psi drop between the supercharger and the intake plenum caused by the plumbing and the IC and that is with running 2.5" tubing. This is in a car capable of mid 12sec 1/4's.

I've still got my front bumper etc, and my IC is mounted off of that instead of against the rad. I have no coolant temperature issues and I still have a/c in the car. Having the bumper there is actually beneficial because it will create turbulence right in front of the IC which slows the incoming air down which increases pressure in front of it. I would dare to say, that I would not see much more cooling effect having that IC totally open to the front of the car. At this point more than 85% of the IC is directly open to incoming air, and the rest of it is being fed through pressure differential. I'm also running the MP chin spoiler in its original location which deflects air up into the rad etc behind the IC, and because it is high velocity air, its at a low pressure state which helps the lower IC by drawing more air through it. I'm also running alcohol injection so that will take care of any residual temps the IC doesn't get, and I get a big boost in octane while I'm at it.... I run the car on 91 octane all the time, and I'm running 26deg of timing to boot.

You have to remember with an air-to-air IC the closer the incoming temperature is to ambient, the harder it is for the IC to remove heat, and that rises exponentially the closer it gets to ambient. In other words, the hotter the air over ambient is coming into the IC, the more efficient the IC becomes. The best you can ever hope for with the ultimate and perfect setup (not possible in our cars) due to in-effencies is within about 20-25 degrees of ambient. Want better than that you need to run water-to-air IC.

I can build and install my IC setup in a day, and my car is still stock looking :).

Fraser
 
I get what your saying. Dont take this as me bein rude. I wanna make the car into what i want it to be. I have a vision of what i would make a car if i could. The tbird sc has always been my favorite car. I wanna personalize it now. I wanna make it look and drive to my expectations, not to within fords factory concept. One of the things i wanna change is the look of the front end. Although the front of the car is functional, i dont like its looks. And if i am gonna change it, i wanna improve it. Or atleast get it right :)
 
I like that. I actually am thinking of cutting the fenders back a little too. And i wanna make the wheel wells round too
 
I think taking the steel bumper bar out is pretty extreme and possibly dangerous ...

I wouldn't have a problem with removing the plastic "eggcrate" absorber, though.
 
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