How the 2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing Avoids the Overheating Problems That Killed Corvettes



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Obviously, Cadillac does not want to participate in this.

“The Z06 did not have side exterior coolers when it was launched,” Mirza Grebovic, Cadillac’s performance variant manager, told me at the car’s media preview. “The only advantage we have with a sedan with a larger fairing that isn’t as sporty is that we have plenty of room to pack additional coolers and heat exchangers.”

If you look at the face of the CT5-V Blackwing, it’s almost the entire grille and radiators. First and of course, there is the central grille, behind which hides a large radiator. This is where the main cooling occurs. To maximize the flow of air entering through the front of the car and ensure that none of the valuable stuff escapes, the car’s designers and engineers sealed the sides of this center grille to help contain air and force it directly into the radiators, aerodynamic Cadillac said performance engineer Scott Sier.

You can see it in the photo above. I point it out!

This approach is also found in the side grilles under the headlights, as there are also two additional radiators. Looking at the face of the CT5-V Blackwing, it’s interesting to observe all of the sealed areas behind the mesh grille; if you weren’t looking for them, you wouldn’t know they were there at all.

To this, Chris Mikalauskas, a chief creative designer at Cadillac, stepped in. “From a design intent, we didn’t want it to look like it was just stuck,” he explained. But the mesh itself isn’t just for show, it’s also functional: if you look down at the design of the grille, the valley of each grille “cell” has structural ribs that speed up the flow of air. air in the engine compartment.

But that’s not all. “We realized that there is an area of ​​the radiator that is not receiving air because the bumper harness is in the way,” said Grebovic. “So we spent a lot of time optimizing these surfaces so that air would come in and flow throughout the radiator area.”

The bumper beam has been machined to be as thin as possible and the foam underneath (for crashes) has a wing shape, so it “pushes the air up and hits the radiator behind the area. blocked, ”said Grebovic. It’s pretty typical for a front bumper to function as both a safety device and an aerodynamic device, but it’s cool in this case because of all the little things the designers at Cadillac have done to optimize. breathing of the CT5-V Blackwing.

The dashboard, under the center grille and bumper beam, also contains ducts that channel air to cool the brakes. I didn’t even realize this part of the front has been a conduit. “Everything is organized in such a way as to separate the different functions: brake coolers, auxiliary coolers,” said Mikalauskas.

The LT4 itself also has a separate cooling system that includes individual radiators under the supercharger cover to cool the intake charge. Under the compressor scrolls there are heat exchangers where the engine sends cooled water from the radiators to cool the air compressed by the compressor. This is not new for this version of the LT4.

But what is new, according to Grebovic, is that they increased the size of the aluminum compressor cover to allow air to move more efficiently through the radiators.

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