Le Chef

I was doing some cleaning today and decided to check for leaves in the radiator openings. The radiator blades appear to have been damaged by stones thrown up by other cars. I'm shocked that they're not better protected. Anyone else found this? Is there a cure?

MTIA

MJones

Fear not, thats the A/C condensor located in front of the raditors..
Just a fact of life with the Porsche..

Haven't had time to de-bug since my trip

OCBen

If you're careful and have the patience, you can use a round toothpick to pick those stones free that are stuck between the aluminum vanes, and use that toothpick to straighten them out as well. I did it on my daily driver and it sure took a long time, cell after cell, row after row.

NOBLEGT3

shocked??? if they were better protected THEY WOULDNT ALLOW AIRFLOW FOR COOLING!! get over it and move on

Le Chef

I would have thought an intelligent engineer could design them so they both allow the right colume of air AND protect them. Other sports car manufacturers seem capable of achieving both goals, so why not Porsche? Poor design is still poor design...

royalpar1

Fear Not? NOT ! My baby with 2500 miles was hit in the condensing unit drive side, with a stone from a truck at probably 90mph. It broke the horizontal tubes which run the gas. AC now gone, and it looked like the front was on fire from the gas escaping. 800.00 later all was better.
Does anyone know where to get a grill? to protect it.
Freak accident? yes, but can and did happen. Stone was still there.

NOBLEGT3

perhaps you could design a jet engine that wont suck birds in

wross996tt

Actually jet engines are designed so that sucking in birds does not affect performance or reliability, and they are tested for this (with frozen chickens).

wross996tt

I am putting a Techart II GTS front end on my car as we speak. I also am concerned as there is nothing in front of the radiators (I know this is the design to allow as much air across the radiators as possible (probably for tracking). But I am putting some aluminum grills on. I got them from customcargrills.com. They will be custom fit and painted. I got the grill with the most air flow.

rss997

cargraphic sells some cool grills for 997,,,silver or black..check out their website...

OCBen

Whoaaaaa, unless you're a jet engine engineer with a new engine design that has yet to be unveiled, I beg to differ.

I used to work at Wright Aeronautical Laboratories where advanced aerospace technology for the Air Force is developed. We used the frozen chickens (thawed actually) to test new canopy designs by shooting them out of a compressed air "cannon" onto the canopies to test their strength against Bird Strike hazzards. No jet engine that I know of can withstand a direct bird strike into the inlet and survive. Even the slightest FOD (foreign object debris) can destroy an engine.

That was (is) a big problem with the Boeing 737 airliner. The engines hang so low on the wings that the suction of the inlet fan would suck up FOD (typically small nuts and bolts) off the tarmac like a vacuum cleaner and destroy the fan blades in the process. We used to refer to that plane as The Hoover.

Any screen over the inlet that could stop a bird strike will inevitably introduce turbulent airflow, which not only reduces engine efficiency but can potentially stall an engine, a more dangerous proposition.

It's not that uncommon for airliners to ingest a bird and lose an engine. That's why they're designed to fly with just one engine if need be.

Porsche engineers no doubt have designed these radiators to work efficiently as is. Any screens you may use over them will undoubtedly reduce the cooling efficiency and increase the engine work load. I would not recommend it. And I think the manual, if I'm not mistaken, warns against it.

JFScheck

That's the nick-name of the Navy's "S-3" Viking...

OCBen

Oh yeah, that one too? ... I'm not surprised.

But the 737 is an older bird. You'd think they would have learned.

wross996tt

Hum...I actually saw them do the testing! Of course this was for commercial aerospace (GE and AlliedSignal) which I know is dramatically different than DoD. It really isn't that bad when you take intop account the massive amount of stainless/titanium and other exotic materials. When you put something in a meat grinder the meat grinder doesn't get destroyed. We also did testing for containment when the engine blows up. Really cool to design an enclosure such that when the engine blows up all of the inside workings are contined so as not to distribute pieces into the passenger compartment or hit some hydraulic lines. No argument about screens on a jet engine. My turbo had horizontal "slats" with the OEM bumper. These certainly affect airflow. With these gone on my new bumper, I decided to add the grills. My guess is there will be about 10% difference at worst.

OCBen

Wow, no kidding. That's interesting. Total containment is certainly difficult to achieve. I don't know if it was caused by a bird strike but containment would have definitely saved lives when the number 2 engine on that United DC-10 that crash landed at Sioux City, Iowa blew up, severing all the hydraulic lines in the tail section.

Here's an interesting link on bird strike hazzards: http://www.int-birdstrike.com/impact.html