I cut the inside openings on my hood today and cleaned up the front openings as well. Inside the hood between the inner and outer layer is a piece of fiberglass that acts as a brace or a baffle. I assume this is to add stability to the raised part of the hood. The piece of fiberglass in my hood was only bonded on the two ends and not in the middle so I removed it but left each end piece. This gives a clear path for the air to come in directly onto the filter. Has anyone else done this with good or bad results?? I had a close look and could not see a reason why the hood will not be as stable there with the piece removed. Any body have any horror stories????

I too have been looking into cuting mine up, & I have noticed that pice inside. mine is bonded to the botom & not the top of the hood & I plan on leaving it there because it acts like a shield for the water not to go in to the filter. I was thinking on triming it on the top so there is more air going in. Im going to trie & make a drawing to ilustrate what I mean, Ill post it later.

Yeah I guess if you have a daily driver it would make sense. Mine only saw sunshine the last 5 years. On my hood I am not sure how much of a difference it would have made as the bottom of the piece was not even touching the inner layer of the hood. When I cut my inner hood openings I made sure I left a 3/4 inch lip to act as a baffle to keep water from going directly into the filter. This way the water simply gets channeled to the sides and out the hole in either corner. I am not sure if rain would ever be able to come directly that far straight back into the hood. I might just glass another piece onto the inner opening at a right angle to keep water from ever being pushed or drawn up into it at any speed.

What filter setup are you using? I have a ram air 2 filter that I want to install but I still dont know if it fits. Ill probably have to cut & rechape somehow. This is what Im thinking to do.

Thats a good pic. I want to put a small piece on the bottom of the inside opening . The piece will point back towards the front of the hood and be on the same slope as the hood. As for a filter system I have 2 ideas I am kicking around right now. My first idea was to use a Camaro TPI or V6 intake duct and modify it to support a filter ontop. That idea was half done when I bought a RA2 setup as well from another board member. I am still waiting to get it. When I do I will figure out which one will be easier to adapt. At least with the Camaro ducting I could build my filter housing to be the same angle at the hood. I have no idea what to expect with the RA2 airbox but will let you know once I get it and try them both out.

just be shure to post any updates of your progress Im shure there is abunch of people here waiting for this to hapen.

I was messing around with the RA2 airbox and it seems as though the maf is a tad too long to fit between the TB and the Airbox..
If you get it to work right, please post some pics since I want to use my RA2 box with my RA1 hood as well.

I've been looking at doing this myself, since I have an RA2 hood, but from what I'm coming up with is the advantages of it aren't worth the money.(for the intake stuff. I've been finding out that a plain jane CAI has better gains, I would just open the nostrils to let air in and help cool the engine.
Just my

Zepher what are you using for an intake bellows??? If its with a Camaro TPI MAF bellows, how much too short is everything???? I have seen lots of RA2 setups with a MAF and a Camaro TPI bellows. I was really hoping that the RA1 hood would allow the RA2 airbox to sit in the same spot. Ah well maybe I will still have to use my Camaro intake ducting. It may be no fun to build but at least I know it will be the right length.

I didn't have any bellows on the car at the time, I was just doing rough measurements. The TPI maf seems to long.

Here is pic of the LT1 we put together with the RA2 hood and RA2 aribox,

Look at the space between the TB and the airbox, that car is using a ZO6 MAF which is not long at all and barely fits in there.

Hey there Jay, Glad to see your still tackaling the Ram Air problem, hopefully this post stays alive as it will be usefull for alot of people and i think should be made a stick or a tech document or something.

Well I finally got around to tinkering on the project. I am 90 percent finished. I mounted the airbox from RamAirHoods. THe airbox is poorly fabricated in my opinion and it took lots of trimming, sanding and some extra screws just to get the filter to sit into the box properly and then to get the top lid to fit tight to the airbox. Before I did this the filter didn't sit deep enough into the airbox to create a good seal and the top piece that screws on never held the filter down in the middle. Now when my filter sits it sits totally flush and actually pops in under slight pressure without distorting the filter itself. By doing this the filter sits lower in the box. I needed to sand down the top piece to get it to sit tight on the top of the filter, but thats good because it lowers the hieght of the airbox giving you more room to work with under the hood. Once I had that done I cut my RA1 hood on the inside AGAIN. I didn't cut them high enough the first time. You need to cut the opening holes as high as you can to allow air to come ontop of the filter. Otherwise the air comes in and just hits the front of the airbox. I cut my openings as absolutely high as I could, right up to where the fiberglass makes a 90 degree. I also never used the aluminum mounting brackets that were designed to bolt into existing holes in the upper rad shrould for the airbox. I simply brought my airbox ahead another 2 1/2 inches, thus giving me more room to mount my MAF. By moving the airbox back it also changed the angle that the airbox sat at. With a little sanding on the belly of the box I was able to get an angle that is steeper or more tilted but yet still has hood clearance. All in all it should work very well. I added a backstop to the top of the filter lid so that no hot air can be drawn from behind where the engine is. The fit is tight but with a little patience it all seemed to work out okay. The other PITA was alligning the RA1 hood in the first place. I am not sure if some people have had worse luck but I had to open up all my hood hinge holes as well as the hinge mounts on the fender, the hood latch holes as well as the headlight pocket mounts and the headlight covers themselves. I am pretty happy with the fit except for the right front piece of the hood closest to the right signal light lense. It still sits slightly higher than the headlight cover in that one spot. I will shoot some pics before it gets disassembled for paint. I am waiting for a bellows to show up so I can finish mounting my MAF but right now I have a good 10-12 inches between my airbox and the front of the T/B to put my MAF and bellows on.

Here is a shot from the side. Its hard to see just where the airbox lines up but you can see the extra room it adds inbetween the throttle body. The piece extending off the airbox will be removed to make room for the MAF. The MAF is only 1/2 inch longer than the piece on the airbox so its easy to see there is lots of room for the intake bellows from a MAF TPI Camaro. I have the front end off to be painted along with the hood so I will post completed pics once I get all the pieces back.

If you look close on the back of the airbox you can see the dam thats been added so that it fits the contour of the hood. This way no hot air can be sucked from the engine bay.

Here is the gap between the airbox and the inside of the hood. The pic came out poorly but you can see by the light behind the airbox that the gap is even and about 1/8 inch all across the back of the airbox. I don't have the latch on the car right now but with the hood closed the gap is almost gone. The small notch you can see is where I mounted the extra screw for the airbox. I have the two screws on the sides still but I also have a screw in the middle on top and on the bottom to hold the top lid tight to the filter. Mine was badly warped when I first bought it and fit poorly.

Awesome! This is wonderful...I can finally get rid of the stock airbox setup

And you already have an intake bellows that will work as you have a factory short piece as well. I couldn't scavange anything from my stock 89 pieces.