I was keen to enlarge the grill area to improve airflow to the radiator on my car.

 

The car gets used almost exclusively for track days, hence my question.

 

I had the whole front end off in the last week to remove the A/C, treat a little surface rust and renew the cam belt.

 

As people may know, the crash bar has to have the centre section removed. Once the plastic bumper has been removed, you can see that if the centre section is cut out, most of the integrity of the crash bar has gone!

 

Do people replace the centre section with something or is that it?

 

To be fair to the car, I have only seen the temp gauge rise by about 1-2mm. that was on a slower track with lots of 2nd and 3rd gear work.

 

At this point, I would rather keep the bar intact if it is going to protect me if the worst happens although I do like the idea of the open front end!

 

Any thoughts?

 

Pictures of before crash bar removal and after prior to clean up and any work. Obvious once centre section is removed, there aint a lot of protection left!

46 minutes ago, phazed said:

As people may know, the crash bar has to have the centre section removed.

Why? No, really, why? The crash bar on the Octy 1 is completely covered by the bumper moulding.

Why, found this. Centre cut away...

 

 

I should have been clearer. I wanted to open up the front as that link...............

A one word answer to the question in your thread title:

 

YES!

 

1 or 2mm is not a measure of temperature, do you mean 1 or 2° it seems that you are talking about water temperature with the reference to the radiator, the temperature guage is fiddled to read 90°c over a very wide range of actual coolant temperatures, what you should be concerned with is the oil temperature which is far more important than water temperature unless the engine is boiling over.

 

Removal of the crash bar will reduce the torsional stiffness that no amount of silly strut braces will replace, if you really want to improve the airflow to the radiator then remove the AC condensor.

drill some holes into the bumper bar around the same size as the 2 that are already on there, got to be better than narrowing the bumper bar

I understand about oil temperature but sadly have not got an oil temperature gauge to monitor yet.

 

I hadn’t thought of stiffness of the chassis, most important in a track day car.

 

I will definitely leave it well alone.

 

I stripped out all the air-conditioning last week so the a/c condenser is not there.

 

I will leave it will alone. I just fitted a new radiator so will have the maximum cooling capacity as I can.

 

Thanks guys.

What about an uprated alloy radiator and/or better fans?