air intakes

[Jon Bisson GSY]

Hi,
Just designing some shrouds to fit over the rear air intakes that lead to the engine compartment. As I have seen discussed before, they are very good at funneling water down into the engine bay, causing rust, annoying dripping sounds etc. I assume that they are designed the way they are to get the most air possible forced into them to feed the airbox and cooling. But I am hoping that a carefully designed airpod/intake scoop may maintain the same volume of air and also stop the water from above.
Any thoughts, knowledge of existing products?
Thanks,
Jon

[hammy44]

good idea they are needed hope you post them when you finalise the design

[boatdog]

think the air intakes are redundant on a watercooled vans, on aircools they force air down into a sealed engine bay to be sent down thru engine for cooling, on watercooled they supply air to aircleaner on right side and nothing on the left, there is so much space around the engine that the air does little to cool the engine, on air cooled the tin wear and seals make sure the air is channelled to aid cooling but there is no tinwear as such on waterboxers.

[Aidan]

you will find there is quite a good air flow through the wbx engine bay from the nearside intake and on a diesel through the offside, even with the sound deadening on them, it's possible to use this airstream for cooling intercoolers and oilcoolers
there are scoops already available to maximise this intake from germany, I have an offside one here

[T-3PO]

Any thoughts, knowledge of existing products?
Thanks,
Jon

There are these which provide some cover the grills http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VW-T25-TYPE-25-T3 ... 2c53e94354" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and I have seen some details on an American site for making some using paint "buckets" whatever a paint bucket is ... might be a paint roller tray?

On the cooling issue ... for the Ebay ones there are a few threads discussing the pro's and cons of them, I've got a set on my 1.6TD, the temp guage used to sit bang on midday but noticed that at higher speeds - 70+ the temp gauge creeping up past the midday position, slow down and it came back down, so I fitted a set and now the temp gauge stays just below the midday position whatever speeds ... having said all that when I fitted them I also found out part of the snorkel air intact was missing! perhaps that may have been a factor to temp rise!

[Jon Bisson GSY]

Thanks for the feedback.
Looks like the ones on ebay do the job just fine. No need point in repeating the process. Although from the limited image, it doesn't look like they extend far at the top to restrict water access from above when stationary. Maybe I could extend them?
Thanks again for the info, off to ebay to place the order.
Jon