Ever seen this used for an oil cooler screen?

[ted]

When I picked up my car from the local fabricator he had substituted these bee hive looking 1/8 thick aluminum screens instead of the Stainless steel woven material I had requested.
He said they were out of the SS weave and without my consent made these 6 aluminum screens.

Anyone every seen this material used in this application?
On the track will it hold up to a rock at 140mph?
Does it flow air well enough?
Even if it does flow well enough it does have more drag than SS.

When they are painted black they will disappear, silver makes them pop out.

I'm hoping I can run them for a couple months and put the requested SS screens on the "when you have the time" list.
The fastener locations are NQR (not quite right).
So would you sweat this bee hive screen?
Thanks,


The material I had requested....

[VFR750]

Check out McMaster Carr http://www.mcmaster.com/ They have the different materials available under "perforated metals"

I noticed the SST mesh has relatively open area. For you ~75% open. The AL sheet has ~50% open area, so you have lost airflow capability through the "mesh". Going from 75% to 50% is a 33% reduction, but is the oil cooler more restrictive??

I would think the AL sheet has less strength, depends on the thickness.

The vents to the brakes will be limited by the opening in the mesh, and the ability to flow air through the rotor.

Regardless where the restriction is, adding blockage to flow can't be a good thing.

[ted]

Thank you Mike, very very helpful.
The AL sheet is not for long.
I posted a couple more photos here.

[TimT]

Those are fugly!!!

they might work on a street car but....

The perforated sheet is restrictive, and the aluminum perimiter further reduces the area of the openings

Id use them till the fabricator makes the correct ones.. then toss these in the trash

[ted]

Yeah agree, but not going back to that fabricator.
Guy just started to make stuff up, like these screens.

[davidppp]

There is some data out there on this:

ANY screen dramatically reduces mass flow..the one you have now is esepcially awful in ths regard.

So keep a shrp eye on this temps!

Kind regards
david

[78targa]

Well, on my first race car I used stainless vent material for my front grill (yes bought the grate from the scrapyard for $2). I think you have similar looking stuff. I think it is usually used in commercial air vents.


I too was concerned about loss of airflow, but the car always stayed around 220 even pushing hard at the track so something must have been getting through.

I always kept the original screen but never needed to go back. It held up very well to alot of abuse.

How you trim it out makes a big difference to the overall look. I made a piece of trim out of thin sheetmetal and painted it black.

Sorry about the boxes in the picture...I used this for my sponsorship package.