Captiva Air Flow ----- Engine Compartment

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Do any of you Captiva guys leave your engine hatch cracked to get better airflow into the motor or have any tricks to do so?

 Seems like the intake of fresh air is kinda restricted .

the boat by no means is a gofast but it does have the 454 in it , so Id like it to breathe better.

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this is a 2000 272 Captiva

JoeStang

You could leave the blowers on to get more fresh air into the engine compartment, but I wouldnt suggest popping the hatch open. I'll bet it isnt designed to be open at all when hitting boat wakes and waves.

Have you noticed poor performance due to excess heat in the engine bay?

Michael T

PT you may not consider your boat a gofast but a 272 with a 454 will go fast! You should have 330 HP with that 454 and a ton of torque. I had a 232 with a 502 in it that was starved for air. We drilled a couple of 4 inch vent holes into the back coaming area and covered them with nice white speaker covers. It looked and worked great. Remember though you will hear some engine noise if you do that. As well, in the 190 Rinker I had with a 390 HP 383 in it (if interested see all the boys are in town post in the Rinker photo gallery on this forum), that engine was being starved for air so we removed the carpeted ends of the tunnels in the aft backs of the coamings on each side of the boat and installed screens in their place to stop stored items from sliding back into the engine compartment. The engine immediately gained 600 rpm which is very significant. Good luck! MT

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Nice collection MT,   

How do you have enough time to drive them all?  

 Do you have pics of the vents you drilled? Id appreciate it

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Found this pic online, whats this round plastic thing under the seat?  Its right infront of the intake/flame arrestor , making it sort of a ram air vent if you were to unscrew the middle out of it.      Can anyone identify what that is?

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JoeStang

Looks like access plate for maybe the engine hatch ram?

Michael T

PT I'm loooking at your picture and it looks like you have a side coaming storage area in the far left hand side of the picture that dead-ends at the engine compartment (hard to see from the pic but I'm guessing) - if so you could probably install an air make-up there easily. Just cover it with a screen of some sort so stored items don't slide into the engine bay under acceleration. You can also put a couple of holes in the front of or under an aft bench seat but you will hear engine noise through those. The noise from holes in side coaming storage areas is far less. I have also seen holes drilled through the top area of the back of the swim platform just under the sun pad but there can be a lot of structural pieces back there and I don't like that location as much as the other two. I don't think I have pictures of the 502 install but I'll look. MT

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Do any of these access panels have a grill feature??   that would be ideal for what Im trying to do

Michael T

PT I have usually cut the hole then covered it with an aftermarket "grillke" like a speaker cover. If you wanted the best of boat worlds yopu could but one of the pre-manufactured ports like shwon in the picture above and have speaker covers that would fit over it. You could then leave it open or closed. MT

floater212

I have a small cubby on the side of my engine compartment in the walkway for ropes or prop wrench, ect. so I used a 4" round plastic house vent with a screen at the stern of the cubby and what a difference much cooler inside when you open it up to get our ski jackets. 212 rinker captiva xr1 350 mpi. 

Speedracer

Picturethis - did you ever figure out how to get more air flow?  I also have a 272 on Lake St. Clair