I was wondering if anyone has made thier own cowl. I have a steel hood and i want to make it look unique. I was wondering if this is something is should try and attempt on my own or just buy a fiberglass cowl or hood and modify that. Of course money is an object, but im willing to try a few things.

If some one has attempted this and made it look good, (at home not a body shop) id love to see it and hear how you did it so successfully.

Look forward to the responses.

 

You can buy a steel cowl (just the cowl) and attach it to your steel hood. You'd probably have to weld it on though for best results. If nothing else, just save up and buy a hood with a cowl already on it.

 

This is one of those catch 22 area's. Sure at first glance your thinkning why spend $XX for a complete hood when I can buy just the cowl for $xx and do it myself. Well, this is where my "chain link fnece theory" comes into play. At first glance it looks pretty simple with minimal investment, but literally once your done buying all the things you'll need to pull this off and the hours you'll have invested trying to do it (and if your first time making it look even half way decent) you'll have ALOT more into it than what your originally thought you would.

Save your patience and money, then just buy a hood outright that's done and can be bolted on. I had a buddy give me a buddy deal on mounting the fiberglass cowl on mine and it still turned into a $700 hood. cuz it takes that much time/material to pull it off so it looks good and most importantly-lasts...I've seen many guys "handy work" trying to do this cowl/snorkel install themselves and it always turns out like chit.

 

My first fiberglass hood that I attached an aeroscoop onto, I think there's still pics of it in my gallery, was extremely expensive. I did a fiberglass molding job on it to blend it into the hood. After at least 20 hours of sanding and bondo to get everything smooth, it still wasn't perfect.

My lastest cowl hood is simply bolted onto the hood with about 50 stainless machine screws. There's a house door insulation strip under the cowl where it seals to the hood and car door edge molding all around the outside. It looks much better than what I was trying to do before. It needs a good sanding and gloss paint. I painted it with spray cans.

Last month I was looking through one of the new racing magazines and saw a bunch of cars with aeroscoops attached to cowls. I ripped the aeroscoop off the old hood, cut it down just enough so that it just clears the tunnel ram filters, contoured it to follow the contour of the cowl and fiberglassed it onto the cowl scoop on the inside. It looks good in pictures but won't win any car shows.

For the most part, buying a premade cowl hood is the cheapest way to go. If you want something unique and different that you have to make it, the cost will be greater but then you have a one of a kind hood.

 

Like they all said, unless you need something off the wall or unique it is cheaper to buy a bolt on, I like mine.
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im building one out of sheet met. its comeing out alright but if i would do it again i would buy one for summit or ebay..........

 

same here, at the end it will crack and in daylight you can see the lines and bumps and ****....

 

yea i bought a metal cowl and put it on with sems metal adhesive not very exspensive (but i get a student discount) because i didnt want to weld it onto the hood and have it warp. i didnt think it was to bad. i just put it on and smeared bondo on it so it wouldnt like like a hack job, primered it and i was done. all i need to do know is put new paint on the car and itll be finished, well bodywise anyway.

 

The SEM stuff is supposed to be pretty good, but I’ve never seen something that is bonded or has a significant coat of filler on it that isn’t obvious under some conditions (usually low angle light and changing temperature, the low light shows of imperfections more and as plastic and metal change temps at different rates so expansion/contraction happen at different rates showing off the work, not in a good way).

There are people out there that can form and add a sheet metal scoop like that flawlessly in a couple of hours blindfolded, but those same people have a lifetime of experience doing it and would never be asking this question…

For about 95% of the rest of the population just buy the glass hood and be done with it.

For that small, maybe 4.99% that fall in between, yea, we can mold something in and make it look good, but you’ll have to weigh the time spent vs just the cost of buying something done.

 

well i didnt have any problems considering i had pretty much an unlimitted time frame to do it and my techer has been doing body work his whole life (takeing autobody at a community college) so i had a very knowledgable assistant. p.s. forgive me if this doesnt make since, i am recovering from a long week (wink wink)

 

plastic scoop on a steel hood...

 

Where do you get a steel cowl? I've only ever seen ABS or fiberglass..

 

heres a link to get a metal cowl A+ Quality Metal Hood Scoops by the Speed Center

 

Good friggidy doo, that's expensive!

Now I'm back to the "do I get a shaker scoop or do I try to cut the back of the hood where it meets the cowl for a hidden cowl induction" phase.

 

I figured id try this but after reading about this from everyone i have desided to just go ahead and order one. I wanted to try it out and jsut mess with it but hte money to put into it just to have no chance of it turning out is not worth it for me. Ill jsut save and save