zeintop owners ...

[blue2000s]

Just a note on cooling. Usually the airflow through the engine compartment is carefully designed and managed. Opening up the top cover will not necessarily improve engine cooling. It could more likely reduce cooling of the engine because the airflow paths are altered.

Imagine you have a tube with an inlet and outlet and air flowing through it to cool the walls of the tube. Then you cut a hole into the middle of that tube. Now a good part of the air leaves through the middle of the tube and the end of the tube is getting warmer than it was before.

[The Radium King]

dunno about that. the boxster engine is in a closed-top compartment that is open at the bottom. heat rises, and will hang around the engine unless moved. the fan in the side vent does just that - it tries to push the hot air out the bottom. i would call it a compromise more than an engineered solution. if you want to talk heat transfer, having a fan on only one side of the engine will cool one side more than the other; even with perfectly engineered airflow around the engine, the air will have heated by the time it reaches the intake side of the compartment.

open the top and the hot air can get out on it's own, especially given the low pressure area back there.

[blue2000s]

The car's motion provides part of the airflow solution. Flow through the engine compartment is studied as thoroughly as the flow over the body.

[Boxtaboy]

Wouldn't then all the heat from the engine emanate into the passenger cabin, making your interior feel like a sauna? Have you ever taken your engine cover off after driving the car for a bit?....the metal cover itself is hot (and that's even with the honeycomb heat shield underneath it). Not to mention you will probably lose hearing after a while as there's no more sound deadening carpeting either. This isn't another stir the pot kinda post of yours for amusement is it, cause if it is, I think you should also remove the heat shield behind your seats for some extra sound and heat ventilation enjoyment.

Have fun with the project, and let us know how you make out!

[The Radium King]

not stirring the pot, just trying to let the heat out and make more room back there. the front bulkhead and sound deadening carpet would remain, just the top of the engine compartment would be gone. the passenger cabin would be separated from it by by a vertical plexi rear window sealed against the bulkhead at the bottom and the roof at the top and sides.

[The Radium King]

ps, it worked ok for porsche's other mid-engined cars; the 904:

904

and the 914:

914

note the rear window design in both cases - easily incorporated into the zeintop. keep the hatch and replace the rear glass w/ louvers so that you don't have to fab a new engine cover. can't have rear quarter windows with the new back window design, so put some vents in there to fill the space and move more air away from the engine.

personally, i love the old 50's and 60's-era porsches and feel that their styling is timeless. once the 70's hit, the only porsche that had any aesthetic value for me was the 911 (i'm certain that the 924/944 and 928 were excellent performance machines, but for me they are not 'timeless' and feel that they are very stylistically tied to the 70's and 80's).

the boxster was supposed to be a return to the 550, etc.. by the time that exercise was complete, however, most of the visual cues and ties to the old porsches were lost. in fact, i often feel that porsche tried to hide the mid-engine aspect of the car as much as possible - the unneccessary volume in the front, the efforts to reduce volume in the rear, the complete encapsulation and hiding of the engine compartment.

now that old boxsters are affordable to slack-jawed yokels like me, i'm looking at simple ways to modify the car to bring back some of these styling, performance and audio cues.

[The Radium King]

ps ps, without an engine cover, i ** think ** a 996 engine swap would be a lot easier - no need to lower the engine or reverse the intakes in order to fit under the cover. less messing w/ coolant, fuel and vacuum lines. i'm still looking into than one.

and as i noted earlier, a lot more room for intercoolers in that dead space above the engine ...