Civic of Doom: Honda Challenge Recycling

[Kaan]

Why was that big piece of plastic blocking off the grill there in the first place?

its aluminum...  I had both the integra and the civic laying around I measured the radiator openings. the opennings are both pretty close in square inches... so why not close off the grill to reduce the drag? integras don't have a grill... they don't have the same drag. it was also WAY cheaper than buying one of these:
http://www.passwordjdm.com/PasswordJDM-D...P2870.aspx

it was an experiment that I'm not 100% done with. I will be making two ducts for the car... one with the grill blocked off and one without. I'll be doing some experiments.

just FYI... AIM says it was good for approximately +1.2mph on the back straight and +.9mph on the front straight (though my lap times with the grill blocked off were slower). So it was doing what it was supposed to do (getting me higher mph) and I wasn't driving as well (apparently).

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ALSO... digging around on the internet (thast how I got the idea) shows that the west coast H1 guys run that bling carbon setup year round. Digging deeper into their photobucket/flickr/google accounts shows they are all ducted from the lower bumper opening to the radiator. they all run a variety of different hood vents.