Unless persuaded otherwise by commentary from this august body, I intend to remove the ram air duct from my 360 cowling for these reasons:

 

     *Never use ram air;  *It doesn't work (doesn't add inches of air pressure);  * It is draggy (perhaps add a knot of speed by removing);  *Making a tight seal of cowling to ram air aluminum structure has always, for me, been problematic causing some loss of ram air pressure and adversely affecting cooling air;  *Saves weight and complexity (remove one long cable and and air valve and replace with simplified, gently-sweeping 90-degree elbow into fuel injection from air-box/filter);  *Doing previous step permits further streamlining of cowling;  *Plane is now in a repaint cycle so this is logical time to modify cowling;  *Aircraft will hereafter use only clean filtered air;  *Facilitates removal and installation of cowling (less time on my back; less dirt and fewer expletives);  *Most spam can planes have only a single source of filtered air (...I think);  *Air filter will be parallel to airflow entering the plenum  making it very highly unlikely that the air-box can ever be plugged so as to suffocate the engine.  Oh, yes, did I say that I never (except for test) use the ram air feature in flight?

 

My loins are girded.  What thinkest you of this plan?   Greg Nelson