Ok guys, so after doing much reading I decided to bite the bullet and try this mod. It has kinda been eating away at me and after doing the lid conversion and being so happy with it several years ago I had to see what the reaction of my simple cam only LT1 Would be. I'm thrilled with the results!! The high RPM pull is quite impressive, my car has always been rev happy but with this mod 7000 comes so quick it blows me away!

So here's my junk, straight forward lid conversion with LS1 upper support. Nothing fancy here, I just wanted it to look as factory as I could get it to, I didn't want to cut into the steel radiator support for this and fortunately I was lucky enough that just cutting the bottom of my 2" VFN cowl hood was enough along with grinding on the bottom of the plastic radiator support to get it to sit as low as possible. I didn't think to take pics of that when I had it apart but hey, it's simple, grind down anything on the bottom of it they causes it to sit higher on the steel support, pretty straight forward.

Bottom of the hood is self explanatory.
In my case I was also doing an HID conversion at the same time as this so I did remove the entire bumper cover and header panel to access a good area to mount my ballasts. From what I've been able to find on other ram air installs this isn't necessary but honestly it's not a ton of trouble to do and it really made getting to things and working around the nose off the car easier for me and not that my car has great paint or anything but it also kept me from marring up the paint that I do have left.

At this point I had already started fitting things into place but before you do that you'll see in Chris's instructions that come with the kit that you have to bend forward a lip on the bottom edge of the steel radiator support. All it is, is the pinch weld where the steel is seamed together and you need to do this just to make some clearance for the ducting to pass by, the ducting is about as large as he could possibly have made it, really! Nothing any bigger would have fit. Also, the hood latch support bracket had to be cut, this is in the instructions also but the picture is a little bit difficult to make out. There's one bolt in the bottom of the support that fastens it to the bottom of the radiator support. This bolt is removed and you cut the bracket itself at the top of the V.

And this is what's removed...

Once you get this far it's time that you can start slipping the duct into place. You'll have to make sure that the plastic radiator support opening from the bottom is cut to the size of the duct obviously or it's not going to fit. I had mine off and on a handful of times mocking it up. The ducting comes with a lip that screws to the bottom edge of the steel bumper. I used a couple of self tapping screws here but the kit also comes with a bolt, washers and nut to fasten it to an already existing hole in the steel bumper. I didn't use this simply because I think the position of my radiator is leaned back further than what an LS car would be. I did this to make sure the lid tucked up into the cowl of the hood. It causes the duct work to be angled a bit different so I had to improvise.

Now into the filter area.. The duct comes straight and it's necessary to fold it forward and roll it over the steel radiator support. It then attached with 3 self tapping screws supplied in the kit. Also in the kit are 8 rivets that attach the sides and rear of the duct into the the plastic radiator support, you simply hold it in place, mark and drill your holes and then fasten. This was another of those times that for me it was simpler to just remove the plastic and drill off of the car and then reinstall.

At this point you pretty much have the project whipped. In the instructions it has you cut the filter tray but as you can see from the picture this wasn't necessary for me, you might. The rest is pretty much just sealing up the unit. It's supplied with foam weatherstripping that you tuck under the front edge to close up the opening, the rest you do inside the box with silicone of your choosing. People often ask and talk about the duct work blocking flow to the radiator. Well, yes and no, direct flow in of course is blocked because there's obviously something directly in front of the radiator, however, there's several inches of area between the ducting and the radiator itself so it's not like Airflow is completely blocked. I can say honestly that before and after the install my temps by the guage are exactly the same, my car has never ran over 180*



Overall I'm incredibly pleased, performance and quality of the part, etc. It's my opinion that it was money well spent. Any time I can do a mod that grabs my attention and I can feel for certain by how the car runs (and yes I'm familiar with how my car runs) I'm very pleased. Then there's the part of this mod that adds a little bit of new character to an old ride and that's the new very cool sucking that's heard, everybody likes a great sucker, lol!


I hope this thread will be some help to anyone desiring to do this mod, I can't say that I've ever put together too many threads but I haven't seen many for this mod on an LT1 and I wanted to share. Enjoy guys!

 

Has anyone ever accomplished this mod with a standard Camaro hood?

 

Yep!

 

Yes, I've seen it somewhere, you end up cutting into the steel radiator support and if you do that you have to get creative with how you attach the ducting since there's no plastic upper radiator support to attach to. It's also going to have an effect on how the duct attaches on the bottom of the car as well since it'll be sitting much lower.

 

I WAS going to try it. Below is some good info.
https://ls1tech.com/forums/lt1-lt4-m...ting-hood.html

 

Vicious95Z28, Looks good. I wish I would have followed through.

 

Looks and sounds like a bit** and a half to do

 

Thanks brotha! Great mod, I really like it! Can't you still?

 

If you're talking to me, not at all. I did it in 2 evenings just a couple of hours at a time after work. It's worth the effort!

 

With a VFN “Sunoco” hood, LS1 rad support and some trimming I got mine to turn out nice.

 

Nice! Looks great! How did you like the CHRS1313?