2007 Lower Grille Block

Hello all. Last night I smoked a big raccoon going at a pretty good clip. It completely destroyed the middle grille. Due to the fact that a prius will high center a squirrel, this is not my first bout with wildlife. Upon inspection the pass. fog lamp housing was broken in pieces and the radiator support beam was bent quite bad. I was able to straighten it back a little by pounding with a sledge back out/. Didn't notice any leaking antifreeze so I should be good. My front bumper grilles have been replaced before and my bumper itself is cracked. I didn't want to spend any more money on grilles or pay for a new cover or assembly. Luckily I procured a piece of carbon fiber that I cut to size and blocked the entire lower grille. I don't have a picture of mine but it's similar to the prius shown where people block the grille in the winter.

My question is since I am currently running a roughly 100% block on the lower grille, how many 3/8" holes do I need to drill in the block for adequate cooling? I should be fine in the winter, but unfortunately the fix I made is pretty much permanent so I will be running this thing year round. I can duct tape the holes in the winter. Also I can't run a scan gauge in this car because it throws error codes and put my car into limp mode so that is out of the question. I have the hole in my dash to prove it I did a ten minute test drive at around 60-70 and when I would stop, the fans weren't running, but I did see someone say it took an hour of highway cruising to overheat. And I routinely run stretches of 80 mph.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I thought about this, but the carbon fiber became way to difficult to cut. I actually ruined a saw blade making this. Even drilling holes is a kind of a pain, although a high quality dreamer bit has allowed me to make some progress.

So from a previous experience the scanguage gives my car fits so I returned it and got my money back. I was going to go the cheap obd2 bluetooth to torque converter app route to monitor temps, but in the reviews of those products even the good ones throw codes in various vehicles. Some guy had it fry his ECU to the tune of thousands of dollars... and after seeing what a scan gauge did to my prius, I have no problem believing it. (I did not have permanent damage fortunately). If anyone can recommend a obd2 bluetooth device that WILL NOT under ANY circumstances throw codes I'd get it. I actually have a copy of techstream on a laptop that is agonizingly slow and that doesn't have a battery. I believe I can use that to check temps. I am currently in the process of trying to install it on another laptop (which also currently does not have a functioning battery but I believe I can fix). Progress on both fronts has been slow.

Here's a picture to show my set up currently. Do you guys think I will be all right now that temps have dipped down into the mid 40s? I can add more holes in the summer. Note the large gap that exists at the top of the block that functions already somewhat in the manner suggested by Vman.