First post, long time looker. I have found a vast amount of info on this site to help me with my truck, thanks to all who have contributed! Now my turn.

I have the towing package on my truck, but drive a lot of slow speed steep incline backroads, and was wanting to upgrade my cooler. I got to looking at the external cooler, and thought it was placed in an awkward position. It is not directly in the open for air to go through it, as it is behind the upper facia. I have always wondered why it was not placed lower to take advantage of the opening between the facia and bumper.

I decieded to make an air deflector out of polycarb to direct air entering the opening to the cooler.

I started with a 1/8 sheet of smoked poly that I custom bent on one end to butt up against the bottom of the cooler, and the other end went under the lower lip of the facia.

I then attached it to the cooler support brackets with 2 plastic push pins, and attached the lower end to the plastic facia with 3 plastic push pins. In total I had to drill 5 holes, 2 in metal and 3 in plastic.

Sorry the pictures are not great, but you get the idea as to whats happening. The poly was 20.5 inches by 10 inches.

After installing the deflector, there is a big differance in how much air is pulled through the opening now, even at idle. After driving it pretty hard, I can not keep my hand on the right side of the cooler because of the tempature, but can easily touch the left side-huge differance in tempature. I will get a infared temp gauge and measure the differance between the hot and cold side of the cooler.

Took me about an hour to fab/bend/install the deflector. Less than 10.00 in parts. Looks factory too. I am now contemplating making one for the top of the cooler also. Time to install a trans temp guage and see where I am at.....

I dont have pics of the piece before I installed it-sorry, wasnt thinking that far ahead. But the poly had a 2 inch 90 degree bend on one of the long sides. Just big enough to keep the poly from sagging in the middle, and attatch it to the cooler supports.

 

Nice work, but you didn't need to really do it. There's plenty of air that circulates all around the inside area of the front radiator, both upper and lower. I installed an aftermarket trans cooler as well as an engine oil cooler in the lower end of the front grill. The engine oil cooler sits low, only about 3 inches of it is within the lower opening. However, plenty of air circulates all around this area.

My transmission temps dropped from about 185 to 190 (summer temps) to 160 to 165. My engine oil temp runs cool as well; don't know what they used to be prior to the engine oil cooler.

Ford did it right. You get plenty of air circulating all over that front area without the need of adding baffling or sheilding.

Nice work though. Looks nice.