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Old 10-30-2008, 05:25 PM   #1 (permalink)
aspera
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: KC
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rear-mounted radiators and ballast tanks

Most of the aero stuff on this forum is the same stuff you'd see at Bonneville. You guys should lurk around landracing.com - Home

One of the tricks you see on the salt is rear-mounted radiators. That's a trick that's used in all sorts of motorsports from ice racers to rallycross cars to rock crawlers to swamp buggies. The new Lexus supercar uses the same trick, too.

The idea is to keep the airflow as clean as possible as long as possible. Wait to dirty it up right before you dump it into the already turbulent wake of the car. Readers of SportCompactCar might be thinking about this article.
P51 Mustang Net Thrust - Net Downforce - Sport Compact Car Magazine

Land speed racecars also use ballast tanks instead of radiators. Those tanks contain cold coolant. After the end of the run the tanks are hot and are allowed to cool down. The ballast tanks allow the cars to seal up the front grille entirely. Running without a radiator wouldn't work on a street car, but adding a ballast tank *IN ADDITION TO* a radiator would create a buffer so the car wouldn't overheat AS QUICKLY. That might help some of you guys that only have a postage stamp sized hole in your air dams.

One other thing I've seen on racecars and hotrodded cars is a hood vent behind the radiator. The Mitsubishi EVO has a good one. It might be worth your while to vent your stock front mounted radiators this way (with a small Gurney flap) and seal the underside of the nose with a splitter/skid plate/sump guard.

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