E30 IS VALANCE DUCTING

The E30 Chassis is notorious for airflow limitations, often resulting overheating issues. Without ducting air directly to the radiator and oil cooler, the air has a high chance of going around, rather than through the coolers. From the factory, the outer valance opens are intended for fog lights and small brake ducts, but these items have been exchanged for a ducting system to direct the air to engine cooling.

For manufacturing and reproduction purposes, I have designed everything in Solid Works. After a few ducting projects, trial and error, and a lot of creativity, I came up with my favorite way to get a rough draft of the desired ducting. Don’t get me wrong, 3D scanning is amazing technology, but cardboard, paint sticks, and hot glue are simple tools that help get the job done.

These rough draft models are then used to measure the distances, angles, and geometry between inlet and outlet. Once the inlet and outlet positions are configured, you can began to determine design features, such as panel geometry and mounting points. All of this information was used to create CAD models. As shown below, some assemblies have been broken into multiple components to aid in printability. To assembly, brass inserts are installed in predetermined holes to create functional & durable threads. To avoid back pressure between the center duct and the side duct, a half-moon has been added where the side duct feeds into the center duct.

After the everything is assembled, a silicon coupler is used to connect the side and center radiator ducting together. The silicon coupler will allow for each piece of ducting to move independently, decreasing the chance of breaking. To simply mounting, the oil cooler duct is mounted to the cooler rather than to the valance itself.