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the carmod pages at theeshadow.net

over this past weekend i was looking at compleat new GT. it turns out that the hood scoop is completely fake. not only is the "grill" on it just plastic, but there is no air passage into the engine bay. so with a little nudging, i convinced him to let me rectify the problem.

after 6 small clips and a bolt holding on the ground strap, the heat shield came right off with no problems. before i took it out of the engine bay i marked where the cutout was going to be with a sharpie. next, the hood scoop itself came off with 5 small nuts. piece of cake.

after separating the ABS "grill" from the fiber glass scoop with 3 ring clips, with my handy dandy 8" drill press i drilled about 200 1/4" holes in the honey comb patern. then i finished up the not-so-whole cells with a drimmel tool.
the new, ventilated grill clipped back on, and the scoop was good to go. now the hood.

a little scratching with my dental picks revealed that the part of the hood needing to be removed was fiber glass. this was good news to me, because it would be a lot easier to cut then steel. after placing a large sheet over the whole engine bay, and placing a piece of wood under where i was gonna be cutting, i spooled up the drimmel. using a spiral cutting bit and a little patients, the 2x8" cutout took about 15 minutes. then i finished off the edges with a brown grinding stone so that they were smooth to the touch. a little sealer here and there for good measure, and we were good to go. the sheet was thougrly covered in a fine white dust, as well as the other 3 cars in the driveway near by. so just be carful, and try not to breath the stuff in.

the heat shield was the funnest part, i cut it in 45 seconds using a drill bit in the drimmel. i must add that due to the middle contents (what looked to be asbestos.....) i would advise doing this outside. following a pencil mark and the molded indent made it foolproof. afterword, i took some metal tape and some high temp silicon adhesive and made a lip around the edge so it didn't have bits of stuff hanging out. as ghetto as that sounds, it matched the silver heat shield quite nicely.

as much work as that seems like, there weren't all that many great results. after all, the engine pulls air from inside of the fender, so it wasnt getting any cooler air. the cold air was blowing on the throtal body, so i guess that did some good. but cold air in your engine bay is never a bad thing. he took it out in the rain yesterday, and it worked fine. no problems at all. so id say the project went as planned. he wants to get a cone filter to go under the scoop now...

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