Although I haven’t posted for a while, I’ve been quite busy working on a fresh air vent system. I’ll post more details in a separate construction folder over the next few days. Basically, the idea is to bring air from the nose of the roadster into the foot box area. There has been quite a bit of discussion on the topic on the forums, not only on some construction ideas but whether or not they are needed. One Factory Five forum vender used to sell a ‘kit’ for the vents but is no longer doing so. There are a number of examples of vent systems but, unfortunately, not a lot of detail about parts, etc. My construction section will detail all the parts that I bought. Below shows some of the construction steps and the progress so far. The crux was finding a 3” tube with a butterfly valve. I finally found one in stainless steel at Marine2Go:
Another challenge was cutting a 3” hole in the passenger and driver footboxes (above). I used a ‘fly cutter’, which has many warnings of ‘do not use without a drill press’. I don’t have a drill press but an EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) video demonstrated the cutting of such a hole using a fly cutter with a hand drill if done very carefully. It took about 10 minutes per hole at about 60 rpm but the cutter worked. The smaller holes around the 3” hole are for a reinforcement piece made from 0.04” Al and an adaptor plate.
The reinforcement plate was riveted to the footbox top. The adaptor plate and coupler were attached to the top of the reinforcement plate:
A 3” aluminum tube from Spectre Performance was used to make the 70 deg. bend toward the front of the roadster.
A similar hole was made in the DS footbox front, also with a reinforcement plate. Shown below is the butterfly valve part in place.
The tubes going into the footboxes will be connected to an Atwood 3000 blowers using high T hose:
I’ll control the butterfly valve using a choke cable that will run from the cockpit to the arm controlling the butterfly position. I still need to drill the holes in the firewall for the cable and grommet but I’ll wait until I have the dash in place so that I know where to put the the choke cable control knob.