The thread(s) I remember ( of which I was involved in a couple of ) were around last July on TMS and MF. I had mentioned that my temps went up. But coinsidentally the same time the grills came out was about the same time that the summer tempatures went up. We started running an informal survey of people in various areas, both NA and forced induction, both with and without the grill, and pretty much came to the conclusion that the grill did not have anything to do with the operating tempatures going up. It was just "summer" causing it. That, and the completely inadquate radiators that these cars came from the factory with.
My temps rose from around 180ish on the freeway to up around 205-210. And with "spirited" driving it went up to 220ish. That is with a supercharger, and in Texas. Don was seeing very close to the same results with a normal grill in San Diego. Dustin was NA and a factory grill in New Hampshire and was seeing about the same temp rise.
One thing I noted with the new grill was that there were actually more of the honey combs open than with the stock grill. A theory I had was that because the stock grill is closed off on either end and the center fog light grill is completely open, that the air was no longer being forced through the radiator. But instead it was allowing the airflow to go around the radiator. I did some modifications to close off the open areas between the grill and the radiator thus forcing all air through the grill to go through the radiator fins. This made very little difference. The lights being in the middle weren't really playing that much of a roll in the possible scenario because they were still taking up the same amount of space, just in a different place. So basically it turned out that the grill wasn't causing the issue, just the hot azz summer was.
FWIW, I ripped out that worthless stock radiator and installed the LFP radiator and my temps dropped about 15 degrees in freeway driving.
They still go up to 220ish on a hundred degree day when I am romping on it, but they go back down pretty quickly. With the stock radiator they would just creep back down.
__________________ 2005 GT Premium,torch red, all available factory options.
Performance mods: Lets just say it's not stock.
Some people are like Slinkies. They're really good for nothing. But they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.
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