We got a closing hood! Took quite a bit of work and it's a very tight fit but I'm happy with the end result.
I had my intake machined at a local machine shop and was able to take about a 1/2" height out of it my removing material from the base and also removing the ribs on the top of the air box. Any more than that, and I would have started having issues with the throttle body hitting the fuel rails and water neck. I'll have to get the air box re-powercoated in the future but for now I just need to get some test miles on this thing!
With the intake modified, I still need to remove some of the inner structure from my hood to make everything fit. So I was cutting, and cutting some more, and cutting some more... and it ended up being a lot more than I thought! At some point in the future, my plan was to install some functional hood vents on the car and since I already had the cut off wheel out, I bit the bullet and ordered a set from Trackspec Motorsports. The install was relatively straightforward with the templates they provide, it just took quite a bit of time to fine tune everything with the grinder and flap disk to get ill the cut edges nice and smooth to look like a pro install. I also had to trim back some of the fins to clear the intake and also the throttle linkage... don't want that getting caught up!
First take the old louver off:
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Tape down the template after measuring and checking a few times:
Then cut it up!
Here you can see just how close everything is:
Once I was happy with the fit and all the cut edges were deburred and smoothed up, I painted the underside of the hood so it would all match up:
Final install... I love the look and should really help with underhood cooling:
Here's all the metal I had to remove... a good weight reduction up high on the front end!
Once that was settled I could finally go on a test drive. The first start of the car was uneventful and it fired right up! Everything looked good in terms of the gauges and vitals, and no fuel, oil or coolant was leaking. You can also lock out the timing and verify it with a timing light to make sure everything is where it should be. Fuel pressure is also easy to set using the sensor. Everything checked out so I ventured out on my first test drive. Obligatory gas station pic:
Everything felt pretty good on the test drive except for a couple of small things: the throttle was hanging up a bit (revs wouldn't drop immediately and I put the clutch in) and the idle was high. I had a high idle with my old ECU, but trying to fix it was a guessing game. With the Holley ECU, it's awesome to be able to plug in your laptop to see what's going on and actually fix the problem.
Turned out I had a big vacuum leak coming from my intake manifold. Turning the idle adjustment screw on the throttle body all the way closed and having it still idle at 900+ rpm turned out to be the giveaway. I found the leak between the intake base and the air box... I must have damaged it when I was shifting things during the installation. Next time I may use a gasket adhesive here:
Unfortunately it's taking a few days for the gaskets arrive so I can't get back to test driving but they should be here soon. In the meantime, I'm working on getting my interior back together and cleaning up this mess:
Pumped to be so close to having a running and driving car again! First autocross is next weekend!
