Yikes, I'd keep it stock guys!!! But, that is just me

 

You are officially banned from this thread.
Seriously, would you remove your Ram Air hood and sport the stock one?
I didn't think so.



So far, all the ideas I've had, some I didn't even post about, never seemed right. I think at the end of the day it will always look like a stock hood that's been modified.

I think what I need to try next is to go a different route. I have the second hood which makes an excellent base. It's metal, so no warping. It's already shaped perfectly, so no trimming or fitting.

I may try my hand at using foam board and fiberglass. I've seen amazing things crafted from those materials. One of my new ideas would be to cut off the front of my hood and reshape it like a firehawk style or find a busted firehawk hood and cut off the front portion and then graft it in place. If anyone knows of a wrecked Firehawk, let me know. If I could find a decent nose section from a Firehawk hood it would help me out a lot. Or at least help me should I choose to go this route. I can then make the front to rear bulges out of foam on top of the sheet metal hood.

It would look a lot like Roger's (U.S.Exotics) Superhawk Outlaw hood that he never was able to produce. I always liked it, but he never made it. I would make 2 changes to my version.
1 Reshape the nose like the true Firehawk hoods which means trimming the bumper cover.
2 Make the grilles just a little smaller so that the side profile of the hood flows more smoothly instead of bulging near the front.

Here is an unmodified Superhawk Outlaw on my car.


My other choice would be a version of the Ram Air hood. My only real problem with the Ram Air is that the front of the scoops are taller than the rear. From the side you loose the flow of the car from the windshield down to the front. Everything else I like about it. The lines just work so well. My idea was to simply (yea, right) cut down the front of the scoops to make them the same height from front to rear. Here is another persons car (I don't have a vert) I modded.


Now these 2 designs I think look really good unlike the previous versions I've tried. Any comments?

 

Hey, thanks for the offer. I supposed you get imperfect hoods that you have to scrap every now and then, huh? I'm not sure what I could use, but I'll ask when I figure it out.

 

Yeap we get some blimised ones and I have so many different items that we can splash just a certian part out of the mold and we do not have to want untill a blim or freight damage. Let me know if I can help out Rex

 

Can you chop the smoothed front bumper pic with a normal WS6 hood?

I think that combination might actually have decent lines. Taking out the double decker look of the bumper openings and just having the ram air intakes.

 

Nope. Tried it already. Looked like crap. The last guy who suggested that changed his mind pretty quick about it, too.
Here's one of my test pictures I did a while back.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...2_25_full1.jpg

I actually like the double decker look. I just think the bigger upper scoops need to be sized down to match the lower scoops and then the rear of the scoops on the windshield end need to be higher. If you look at the profile of the Ram Air scoops you will see the the front is 3" tall and the rear is 1.5" tall. I want to make my scoops the same height from front to rear. Probably 2.5" from front to back. Then the front scoops will be closer in size to the lower scoops and it will stick up higher near the windshield to give it a more aggressive look. I could also change the factory 3"/1.5" height to 2.5"/2". It's that subtle difference that makes the side view of the car totally work better and integrate with the windshield angle.

A bonus idea on this modded Ram Air design would be that I could bond in some clear etched plexiglass inserts around the decal area. I could then mount some different LED's and make the "RAM AIR" logo light up at night. Red, blue, orange, whatever. I even saw a circuit that slowly changes colors using 3 LED's and cycles through the whole rainbow in about 20 seconds. It's mezmerizing. Or just leave it off and the plexi would appear off-white colored. I would just use a stencil over that area when I paint it black. Peel the stencil off and then clear the hood. I see it as one of those subtle things that no one would notice until you turn it on and then jaws would drop.

I don't know why I chose this 2 tone picture to show the light up lettering, but here it is.
Red:


Blue:

 

Yeah, still looks like crap.
I wish Rodger still made his take on the Firehawk hood. That's still the best looking hood that I've seen compared to the real Firehawk and Raptor hood. The Raptor is the only thing really left unless you want to spend $1500 thru GM on a real Firehawk hood

 

You can still get used firehawk hoods on e-bay for $300-$450.

Just to give my modded Ram Air hood some spice, how about some heat extractors in about the same location and size as on Ryse's GTO drift car.



On the black hood with no stripes or anything, they would give it a subtle, but unique look as well as be functional. Once you get close to the car they should be noticable and the viewer will realize this isn't a regular Ram Air hood. The light up logo will be just that little extra touch.

What do you guys think about that idea for my hood?

 

I'd like to see those heat extracters on the sides of a stock T/A hood man...

 

I like the vent on the side. Can you try putting those on like a Firehawk hood and without the little vent in the back on the firehawk, just the big openings. Or even on a WS6 hood I think it would look really good.

 

i would really like someone to make a WS6 style with louvers towards the back. the lighted ram air looks good, but looks really hard to have it smooth.

 

I want to see a cowl stock type Trans Am hood. Not too extreme, maybe 1.5 - 2" higher in the middle. Give the hood more buldged look.

 

I think making a Raptor style hood may be a little out of my league. I'm just being honest, I can do a lot of stuff, but the complexity of making a nice Raptor might be too much for me.

It looks like I'm going back to my original hood idea from over a year ago and just turn my donor hood into a Ram Air, but with a twist. I can take all the lines I like about it and then modify the parts I don't like. I measured the lower stock air scoops and they are 2" tall. So I plan to make the RA scoops I'm going to place on top of the hood 2" also. The factory RA scoops are about 2.5" tall, so I'll be removing about 1/2" from the height in the front. I haven't decided how much height I will add the the rear height, but maybe go from 1.5" to about 2" or so. I'll have to do all the final decisions with the scoops sitting on the hood and looking at it from different angles.

This whole process is much easier to do because you are basically just adding a fiberglass scoop assembly on top of a metal hood.

I will try and do a few more Photoshops with the heat extractors on a car very close to mine and then see what you guys think.

For all the folks wanting to see other stuff, I could try and do some photoshops of your car with the changes you want later. Right now I don't have a lot of extra time.

 

Bringing this thread back to life, as well as a few others. I finally got some money so I'm going to be doing up the hood.

Since I can now afford it, I'm going to get what I wanted all along, a factory Firehawk hood. They are a bit tame looking on a black car because the lines are somewhat hidden compared to the RamAir cars that you can tell from a mile away. I'm thinking of adding a little something. Since the middle of the FH hood kinda goes down with the bulges on either side, why not add a simple scoop over the center section. It doesn't have to be very high, but it will be the tallest part of the hood. I think it would be pretty cool.

I couldn't accurately create a scoop out of thin air so I just painted one on in about the size and shape I had in mind. Imagine it painted and molded in. Do you think it has potential?

 

i want to see the smoothed front with a shaker hood...

 

I realllly like the filled in nose - also like the pic in post #19.

 

Good lukck... i like the shaker hood mod

 

I love the firehawk hood - in fact, if I'd known the firehawk existed at the time I got my car, I probably would have bought one. I just don't think that scoop will look right. It will just make an elegant hood busy. A shaker style scoop could look good on it though...

 

No love for my latest idea, huh? Well, assuming I can get the FH hood, once it's in hand I'll set it on the car and then make a few mock scoops and play around with the proportions of it to make it look as "right" as I can and snap a few pics of it. Who knows, I may not even like the added scoop,

 

Well, turns out there where no Firehawk hoods for sale at the time, but I did snag a nice Raptor hood. It's been sitting on the side of my house for a couple months so I'm going to dust it off and snap a few pics.

I really like this design although it does need some changes as no hood seems perfect to me. It has a big square hole under the front for the air box to seal to. I'm not buying the $300 Raptor air box so I'm going to fill that hole in.

The hardest part will be reshaping the nose. I want to cut my front bumper cover and then extend the hood forward to fill the gap very much like the Firehawk hoods do. I'm trying to find a Firehawk to make a template from so I know what SLP cut off and the exact shape.

I'm also going to remove the baffles in the nose to make the air flow straight in.

I'll also make a little filler piece for the tip of the hood similar to the firehawks.