"Louverectomy"

Rear Louver Modification
10/20/2007

On a trip in June 07 through AZ, CO & NM in 100° temps, I had to watch the engine water temp and downshift whenever it began to rise. Not cool! Once home, I ran the engine on high idle (1000 rpm) and could feel airflow at the rear up to about 2' from the grill. I removed the entire grill and the air could be felt at least 8' away.

Starting from the top, I removed #3 and all the succeeding odd numbered louvers totaling 10 of the 21. Rechecking for airflow with the modified grill in place gave results almost the same as with no grill.

We just completed a 10 week trip towing a Ranger pickup after removing the rear louvers and here are the results of the venture. On the trip East in August, we encountered several days in 100+ temperatures. In mountainous driving, I run with "mode" turned off to keep the engine speed up. A few times on long uphill pulls, when the engine temperature would rise above 200, I would force a downshift to lessen the load on the engine and speed it up to circulate the fluids faster. This always kept the temps under control. As soon as the uphill was completed, the engine temp would go back down. Most of the time we cruised at under 185 degrees.

The return trip West through Colorado was in 50 degree weather and even up to the Eisenhower Tunnel at 11015', the engine ran below 190 and that is quite a hill to pull.

In my opion, the "louverectomy" was a giant success and I would recommend it to anyone with cooling issues.

Here is the view after the "surgery".