Re: speaking of grills...

[AUDIDUDI@delphi.com]

> Abt has an interesting grill. 5 bars going across with black rings.
> You could also take the headlights, hood, and trim piece from a cabriolet,
> '92 or newer 90 or Coupe,  and modify the latch system...Then from there
> pull out the grill and replace with wire mesh, mount the rings and voila,
> RS2 front end(minus the bumber of course).

Although this has nothing whatsoever to do with 90s, I've noticed the rings
on the grill have a fairly significant effect on airflow to the intercooler
of my 200q.  Just prior to my ill-fated trip to Alburquerque, NM earlier in
the year, I removed the intercooler to clean it while servicing the car and
noticed the paint was in surprisingly good shape.  During the trip, I found
myself caught in the middle of a cinder-storm on I-40 (it sounded very much
I was driving into a hail of BBs!) and trashed the paint & glass on my car.
After returning home, I removed the intercooler again to verify that it was
not damaged (it wasn't, alas ... so much for getting Allstate to pay for my
Spearco!) and noticed the paint underneath the rings was intact, unlike the
rest of the intercooler, which was pretty much blasted back to bare metal.

While I haven't explored this any further, it appears the rings cast a very
large "shadow" on the intercooler core and there is a potential performance
improvement to be had from a different grill design.  Of course, there is a
tradeoff between increased drag and flowing more air to the intercooler but
I don't think the penalty's all that great at normal driving speeds ... any
thoughts on this?.

     _             _             
    / l       l o l  \       l o   Jeffrey Goggin
   /__l l l / l l l  l l l / l l   * * * * * * *
  /   l l_l \_l l l__/ l_l \_l l   AudiDudi@delphi.com