bassboy3313

ive seen many cars with these engine bay covers like in this picture ...

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r175/ba...essor_e39_2.jpg

I was wondering if this was safe for the engine when driving? would it cause any damage to anything if you drove with it on your car?

StrikeEagle

Sure, it should be fine. The GK is pretty much covered up like that, so since companies do it stock, I think we could too. It traps heat in a little, which isn't a huge problem, and as long as you don't have any parts flying around your engine bay, it should be fine.
And for those who don't want to click the link, here:

KCVoRTeX

I can't imagine that paint lasting to long in a turboed car though.

DTN

^^ Why not? It's vented. Your hood paint will stay on a car that's turboed.

UrS0NvS

covers like that sometimes are used for show purposes, like this is being used in the pic unless the owner drives on carpet all the time.

'treezy

that's not carpet! (i had to look harder), it's paver! see grass.. and dirt..
but still.

how does that even come off?

seems like TSing a problem or noticing a leak during a routine inspection would be an unneccessarily large PITA.

oh, and what DTN meant to say is he's already half way done with a plexiglass one embedded with dancing LEDs.

DTN

^^ Drat, you foiled my secret plan to suprise everyone...

Actually, I've been looking at it, and it dosn't really look promissing to make a cover. There are too many things up high on our engines to do such a thing. It would have access holes everywhere.

tanc

Those covers are the stupidest things ever engineered. Every car I've owned that has had one I rip it off. I can't deal with that enclosed BS. Traps a lot of heat, plus in order to check a belt I have to remove that whole shit? Pain in the ass.

DTN

^^ A cover can be made to funnel air flow to the places you need it most or divert heat directly out a vent instead of wherever the air inside the engine takes it. I like the idea of full engine covers. I don't like those extra covers where you have to take 21 bolts off to get to some parts of the newer engines when they serve no purpose except to make the engine look bigger then it is. I like the easy to clean fender to fender fiberglass engine covers though.

Alex01tib

OEM covers are useless garbage for people who like to pretend that their engine is a clean plastic box that doesn't have belts and hoses and wires.

DTN, you just like to validate rice. Sure you could make plastic ducting and such but they didn't. The engineers didn't put that much thought into it, they just slapped some plastic on the engine and called it a day. They want soccer moms to be able to open the engine and not get scared when they see a seemingly random chaos of engine parts that they don't know what each does. They just point to the plastic and say, "that's the engine."

Bottom line is, it's eliminating your ability to open the hood and easily inspect the engines status. Something could be leaking or broke and you wouldn't know because everything looks "fine"