Hollowed out headlight (wind funnel, racing modification)

Hi guys,

I did this mod on my EG race car because I didn't want to spend some ridiculous amount of money to buy some little funnel to replace my headlight. So instead I transformed my own for very cheap!

This was done to an EG but the concept should be easily applicable to other cars.

Final result:
Attachment 23128

Disclaimer: The following is provided as a GUIDE ONLY, and neither myself nor Ozhonda take any responsibility for the outcomes of someone else doing the following. You follow these steps at your own risk!

Aim: to turn the headlight in front of the air filter into a wind funnel so that air passes through it, directly into the air filter/intake.

Required: What you need to do this mod:
- heat gun
- preferably a metal spatula/scraper, if not a flat head screwdriver or something similar
- angle grinder
- a texta/marker if you like being extra accurate
- a bastard cut file (not necessary)

Steps:

Step 1:
remove the headlight which you want to modify by unscrewing the 10mm bolts securing it to the car (this will likely involve removing the front bumper). For the EG there were about 5 in total (just look for them). The headlight and blinker should come off as one piece.
Attachment 23125

Store the nuts and bolts in a safe place, and label them if necessary. It pays to be organised!

After this, separate the blinker and the head light (they should slide off each other, if that makes sense).

Step 2:
grind out all the inside of the headlight. Make sure you leave all the brackets intact as shown in the picture. You might want to mark the area you want to cut before you cut it. The idea is to cut out as much crap as you can while leaving all the brackets.
Attachment 23124

Also, looking at the next picture, I've left some plastic on the right to create a nice funnel effect, since when the headlight is reinstalled there is just some metal in the car's frame behind that bit of plastic, which will create more unwanted turbulence. This bit of plastic I am referring to is also necessary to keep there (in the case of the EG's headlight) in order to keep all the brackets intact.
Attachment 23126

Step 3:
use the heat gun to separate the glass and the plastic (sorry, no pics on this step). What you have to do is set the heat gun to a relatively low heat/fan setting, direct heat along the seam where the glass and plastic are joined and use the spatula to get in there and separate the two. You don't want so much heat as to fully melt the plastic, but rather just to soften it to the point where it can be dislodged. The lower temperature you can achieve this at, the better the final result will look. Another tip to achieve this is to not focus the heat gun at any single point for too long - try and move it left and right over an area and do that area bit by bit. Do this until you have completely dislodged the two pieces.

Step 4:
file off any excess little bits of melted plastic or whatever for a nicer finish.

Step 5:
rejoin the blinker to the remaining mutilated piece of the headlight and reinstall that to the car just as it was fitted originally. It should look something like this:
Attachment 23127

Attachment 23128

In these photos you can see the melted part from the heat gun (where the glass and plastic was joined) and the bit which has been ground off. Have a peak through and you can see the air filter so the air goes directly into it.

Other comments:

A good follow up mod to this might be to create some sort of air box (very thin sheet metal?) surrounding the air filter and the exit of this wind funnel, though I doubt that would make much difference to performance.

Note that I have included photos for the right head light but done the mod the left head light. This is because I applied steps 1 and 2 to the right head light. Why? Because race car. Every gram counts.

Wouldn't it be easier to just remove the headlight when you take it out on the track ?

PS.

You still got your RX7 ? :p

Never got to see it much after it was resprayed many moons ago with the hotwires!

Well, I suppose if I only ever took the car to one track day it'd be easier to just take out the headlight; maybe even two. But there would be some number of track days to which I could take this car at which point it would have been easier to just do this mod in the first place instead of having to remove the bumper, remover the headlight and reinstall the bumper each time. And I plan to take this car to many, many more track days than that number.

Moreover, this mod allows you to retain the blinker. You can't simply take off the headlight and leave the blinker on because the main bracket of the blinker is on the headlight. Leaving the blinker on makes the car more slippery, and however insignificant that performance gain may be, it's still a gain! Plus, the car looks better this way. And the mod was fun to do!

I could probably go on for an hour on why one would do this mod, but in a nutshell this mod is as much to do with function as it is to do with having fun modifying cars and basically putting the whole philosophy behind that into practice. This is something you just can't do with a road legal car, and that feels pretty good :)

As for the RX7, I think you're confusing me with one of the previous owners of this car! Like I said in my introductory thread, I understand this car is quite the whore :P And if I was a proud RX7 owner I probably wouldn't have put the number plate "CYA 13B" on my next car haha. I just keep it on there for the lols and to keep the history of the car alive :)

need speed holes