What is the hole in the hood/bonnet?

that front scoop feeds air to a front radiator or intercooler of some sort

 

Actually it would be to extract the air, not feed it. It'd be fed by the front somewhere (presumably grill) and then let out through that hole. Not sure why there'd be one on a 355 or 348, the radiators are in the back and an intercooler that far forward would create a lot of lag. Maybe move the radiator(s) up front and put the intercoolers where the radiators are?

I'm struggling to think how that would work as a stand alone aero device unless it could be used in conjunction with a fan to "suck" the underbody air up through it...

 

+1

Pointless on a 355 as the front grill is a dummy. They are usually found on cars with front mounted radiators so the air can flow through the radiator and escape out through the hole rather than having nowwhere to go.

 

I like the LM style headlights on the yellow car.

 

Maybe with the right tubing to help cool the brakes?

Mike

 

Aero is my guess.

 

Third radiator or an oil cooler? Maybe he/she added a flux capacitor? Those things tend to generate tons of heat past 88mph.

 

I'm gonna guess that's purely for aerodynamics. The grill was opened and vents out on top of the front cover. No colling, no turbo intercooler, just down force.

 

Extra downforce

 

one for sale in japan.....

?????????????????F355 348? ??????? - Yahoo!??????

 

yes, sorry, you are right on the flow direction. maybe they put some kind of extra intercooler for a turbo up there?

 

It's actually a bit of both and taken from an F40 LM. Air goes in the front then is fed through an extra radiator for cooling. The fact the air is being taken partly from air that would go under the car but is diverted over it, decreases the pressure under the car, increases it slightly over it, therefore creates downforce (a little anyway). Basically you get both. This is an F40 LM with bonnet removed.
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Yes, and this would stuck air up and over the car that would otherwise go under it. If you can keep the air from going under the car, you get huge downforce - that's how ground effect cars worked in f1.

 

I'll get a little geeky here if you want. What you're looking at is two different ways of getting the same effect. What you're refering to - air speeding up causing low pressure or bernoulli's principle, is how diffusers work. A diffuser under a vehicle works by increasing the volume that the air flows into therefore speeding it up and lowering that air's pressure - lower pressure under the car means more downforce. It does assume, however, that you limit air that will flow in from the sides or be added to the flow under the car as this would obviously limit the effect by increasing the pressure again.

Over a car like the 355 (or 348) you have a very efficient aerofoil in cross-section which if you do nothing about it will create some lift (air going over has to travel further than air going under so lower pressure over the top surface, just like a wing). What you are doing here is adding air to the upper surface of that aerofoil by taking air that would go under the car and diverting it over. In essence you've got a little less air under the car (so lower pressure) and a little more over it (so higher pressure) giving you positive downforce. You're right that the air will have to speed up but it is being added to what would otherwise be there, you're not speeding up the air that's already there.

As an aside a forward edge slat on an aircraft wing appears to be going against what I'm saying but it's operating on a slightly different priciple. Yes it diverts some air over the upper surface of the wing which would seem to go against what I'm saying as you would loose a little lift. The extra directed airflow though stops the wing stalling allowing a large increase in the angle of attack. So while you loose a very small amount of lift by passing a little air over the wing that would otherwise go under it, that wing can operate at a much higher angle of attack so the wing as a whole produces more lift.

Back to the sort of setup we're looking at, a setup like the F40 LM uses that airflow for cooling so you get the benefit of diverting air that would go under the vehicle and passing it over, giving you a positive effect, and at the same time make use of that airflow to keep the temperature down, so a second positive effect.

Hope that sort of makes sense?

 

Must be tricky running the water pipes from the front to the back, unless it's just a single seat race car and they just run them through the passenger side of the interior. I'm also guessing they needed an auxiliary water pump to handle the new plumbing.