I'm looking into purchasing my friends SS camaro good for my car. I am putting in a 400sbc with a Holley street dominator intake on it. WIll have poly motor mounts. I'm wondering if this will fit under the SS hood, and if not can the lower plane (red line) have a circle cut to alow the air cleaner to fit in it? Or would that hurt the structural rigidty (?) of the hood? The hood was ordered through Hawks, and I believe is the TPI hood. I don't know if Hawks lets you choose between a TPI and Carb hood, but on the ASCD site you can choose.

The reason I want to go this route is it will be much cheaper since I will be able to avoid shipping.

 

I just did some searching with the new search feature and found that I can use a "drop base air cleaner". I have a 86 Z28 with the stock hood. Could I possibly get this "drop base air cleaner" and keep my stock hood?

 

with a drop base and the right air cleaner you can probably clear the stock hood if you have some patience. otherwise with the ss hood it should fit for sure, i don't see a problem with cutting away material with the hood, but if your nervous you can easily add some brace in there. I might do that with mine...just to be on the safe side.
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i see your from steven's point, i gotta bring my car there for a dyno tune pretty quick. do you know d and d mods and rods? any reviews on them, lol