Anyone done hood vents?

As I've gotten more and more into open tracking over the past 10 years, I've learned a bit more about aerodynamics. Heat extractor vents in the hood have all sorts of benefits - reduce pressure under the hood (thereby reducing front end lift), improve airflow through the radiator, let some air out over the car rather than passing under the turbulent, non-aerodynamic underside, etc. The hood of the V looks like it wants to jump right off the car when you're blitzing down the straightaways at high speeds, so I'm sure some vents would be effective.

So, I've been planning to vent the hood of my Subaru for a while. I've done most of my track days in the Subie and I think it would benefit from some hood vents, particular for the improved flow through the radiator. I've accumulated a variety of OEM vents off Ebay and from junkyards as I looked around for a possible solution. In the end it looks like the Subie's going to get a '10 Mustang GT500 hood vent, but that leaves me with some other vents to play with.

In all the pics below the trailing edge of the painter's tape is about where the trailing edge of the fan shrouds is. No point in having the vents any farther forward than that.

Here are some vents taken from a 80s/90s Trans Am GTA. As you can see in the linked picture, the larger ones were actually run 180deg opposite of what I'm looking for, so I guess they must've fed the air intake rather than acting as vents. Whatevah!




Another option would be to put them so they're venting out to the sides. The shape of them doesn't really work out too well - they wouldn't line up with anything quite right.




And then there are the smaller, side-facing vents. I think these would be a nice, subtle touch mounted in basically the same place they were mounted on the GTA hood. Line them up with the character lines on the hood and I think they'd look almost OEM. The down side, of course, is that they're not very big.






An older picture with vents from a 80s turbo Lebaron:


And the biggest, baddest vents of them all, the Lumina Z34 vents.




On the Z34's hood they were mounted to vent to the side, kinda like the second set of pics I posted of the Trans Am vents. I could also do that on the V's hood, and it doesn't look bad, but for whatever reason I didn't take any pictures in that orientation.

Although I don't have them with this set, as installed on the Z34 they had rain drip trays beneath them. I would have to either get the drip trays, or make my own, otherwise the engine bay would get doused in the rain. But I could just pull the drip trays off for the track.

They line up almost perfectly - if I position the side of the vents parallel to the character line in the hood, the front edge of the vents lines up pretty well with the front of the hood. It's not perfect, but since they're set back almost 2ft I don't think it would matter.


In the more expensive, blingier realm, there's these CF vents from Anvil Auto. I don't have a pair of those handy, so I can't show you how they would look on the V's hood. Here's a nice shot of them on a classic Camaro:


They're about 8x12". In comparison, the Z34 louvers are about 7x20".