If I were to instal one of this Comet GT hood scoops on my 70 Maverick, and wanted to make it "functional" by opening a hole on the hood. Is there an issue with rain water getting inside the engine compartment? Or is anything else that needs to be done to avoid it. I meant hood, just can't edit the tittle.
That is the setup that I have and yes water will get in the engine compartment. I have thought about building a tray and sealing it to the hood. As long as the bottom of the tray is lower than the carb I could install a drain tube for any water that enters. The engine would benefit from the cooler air. But I try to avoid driving my car in the rain.
Personally, I have never had issue with collecting water in any sort of bad way. That being said, my engines are never show quality like some members here have. That might change my mind if that were the case. I guess it comes down to: Is it a danger? No. Is it annoying to someone with a very clean engine bay? Probably. One thing is for sure, if you are getting any benefit from it, your air filter will get dirty MUCH quicker than you are used to. Mine stuck half in and half out of my similar setup. The bottom of the filter would be pretty for a long time, but the top half exposed to the scoop would get dirty quick. Lots of nastys, including sand. If I was on a budget, I would flip the filter over and backwards to get clean surface through the hood. My .02 Dave Edit: Forgot to mention, I have had best results by only cutting the hole in the hood just large enough to fit the air filter through. Barely fitting through. That way there was very little, if any, room for things to go around the air cleaner and get to the engine bay. I used a 10" filter... so I cut a 10.25" hole. If you look at the hood in the pic, you get what I mean.
In this particular project car, my concern isn't the engine compartment appearance, but having issues with engine operation. Have you felt any engine miss when it's raining? Or water getting inside the carb? IMO one can locate a piece of metal as a water deflector?? Just to avoid water to get in direct contact with the filter element. In a Grabber hood, where does the hood's holes direct airflow to? Are they efficient in any way? I've been having trouble locating a Grabber hood locally, and I'd preffer an efficient hood scoop over any original hood design.
I have never had an issue with water in the engine. The Grabber hood was not open. It was totally cosmetic. Hoods that are open from the factory either have so many baffles they aren't worth having, or they get a little water from my experience. You oughta talk to late model (as late as they got) Camaro/Firebird guys. The stock air intake pulls air from behind the nose of the car. Aftermarket systems actually have a scoop that projects from under the front of the car. Some are so aggressive that guys have hydrolocked engines in the rain from standing water in the road! Never happened to a WS6 with the scoop in the hood. The nostrils on that one ram right into the air box, and right inline with the TB. Dave
You can tell from this pic that my setup was used for years and on a few engine combos. Same air cleaner, different engines. Here it is on my Cleveland. You can see it is darker on the top half. That is what was above the hood, the cleaner part was lower. You can see in this pic that it also has gotten wet. The element is very old in this pic. Due to be changed. No matter, it was never soaking wet. I have lifted the hood while wet and it never just dumped water from inside the scoop as the hood was raised. I ran a bead of sealer between the hood and scoop though. Dave
i just did the hood scoop on mine.. it was a custom fab...sealed the carb to the under side of the hood... gained nearly .2 in the 1/4 from it
If you want to cut precision, don't think the carb is exactly centered. Using the carb and intake that you want the hole to mate to, get a long piece of all thread the same size as your air cleaner stud. Cut it long enough to contact the hood when you screw it into the carb. Sharpen the top to a point. Make it where it just touches the hood when it is shut. If you have it too long, it will just bend when you close the hood. You want it to only be about 1/16" too long to close the hood, barely too much. That way when you put pressure on the hood to shut it down on the stud, it doesn't bend. You just want to push a tiny ding in the hood enough that you can find the center of your carb. That is how I did mine so precise. Then I made a compass to put in the tiny carb stud ding and scribed the exact size circle I needed to barely fit my cleaner through the hood. I'll tell you now that if you want to use a filter housing larger than 11", you will have to cut some hood bracing back. That is why I used the small filter. Mine was off center of the hood by about 3/16". Between the age of the car, factory tolerances of body panels, tolerances of engine mounts, these are why you can't just assume your hole will center on the hood. After mine was cut though, it worked perfectly with any engine or single carb intake I used. Dave
