Hey guys.

So I've been in the middle of doing body work on the bird recently. Much effort has gone into fixing up a turbo bulge hood that needed some love (almost there though!) that I wanted to put on the car. To my knowledge, some 82-84 T/A's had a functional version of this hood w/a specific air duct to the air cleaner, and the flap would open up?

Mine just has the block-off plate behind the grille piece. But I had the thought, wouldn't I be able to fab up some kind of ducting and use it on my current car? Would it work well w/either a TBI or TPI system? Would it at the least, provide a flow of cooler air to the engine, or even work at all? Would it be worth the trouble? Just curious! Have any of you guys done it, and with pics?

 

My '84 TA had functional "cold air" induction from the hood bulge. IIRC, a plastic duct on the underside of the bulge mated to a rubber gasket on top of the air cleaner. That was a carbureted car, so the air cleaner was right there. Being factory, it was set up to separate out rain water, of course. From an airflow perspective, it looked rather restrictive, so it may have been more for marketing than performance.

I'm sure you could build something that would be functional and not so restrictive. Would it be worth it? Hard to say. I don't think there will be any performance gain, compared to a decent under-hood cold air induction. But there might be a certain cool factor to it.

On a side note, I had a '77 TA in high school with the blocked-off shaker hood scoop. I cut out the fake rear-facing opening, and installed a flapper door. When you stepped on the throttle, that door would flip open. My passengers got a kick out of it, at least the male teenage ones did.

 

iirc there was 2 versions of that, one for the Crossfire and one for the Carb. I'm sure you could still find an original around somewhere.

my '82 T/A had it, was pretty cool on the old Crossfire. Not much of a performance gain but it didn't hurt anything.

 

I have one of each of the parts that bolt to the hood for the ceasefire an the stumblerator.
I don't have the mesh parts for the scoop or the aircleaners for the motor.
kinda neet really

 

Deathstarr89 - Looks like you were right. I saw an original air induction system pop up on ebay recently. They seem to command a fair chunk of change too, lol.

I'm sure throwing an original on a carb/TBI setup would be easier, but fabbing something up could be fun too, possibly better performing?

My main questions I still have though, are induction system related. Would there really be much of any benefit to use the bulge-style hood scoop w/TPI? My guess atm is that the long air ducting that would be required might render it inefficient, vs the short distance for the air to get to the TBI/carb style air-cleaner assembly. Please do correct me if I'm mistaken though.

Also, would simply leaving the scoop block-off plate off provide a similar benefit to having ducting directly feeding the air cleaner/throttle body w/cool air? Or would this more or less be just another way to provide cool air around the motor like what an air dam does?

 

When i pulled my crossfire out for the carbbed 355 i removed the scoop hardware and just left it open. It kept the bay a little cooler for sure. You could feel the air moving through there quite a bit. I was able to keep the factory mesh piece in there so nothing would fall in through it.


for a TPI, not worth it. You want the most direct flow possible, the more bends in the intake tubing the less efficient it is.



If i had known they were worth money i'd have kept mine, i had both styles and just gave them away when i sold the car.

 

Yeah, it seems like as soon as I bring this thread up, I've seen a few of em pop up on ebay, lol. Seems like both those and dual snorkel air cleaners from the same year camaros can fetch a few bucks now.

I had a strong feeling about this idea not being the best w/TPI. Yet another reason to say w/the TBI I guess, lol.

Looks like the way the factory units were made bolts directly up to the scoop opening, and a small duct on the bottom connects to the carb or cross-fire assembly. Seems to me that on TBI, this would allow more air in, but it would also be bypassing the air filter too.

If I wanted to try using one w/a TBI, maybe the best way to go about it would be to snag up a factory ram air box, and cut/widen the side opening on the air cleaner (where the stock duct hooks up), and just connect some wider ducting to the box? Seems that way it would allow both more, and cooler air in than stock, and still let the air filter do it's job .

 

So I'm back in this thread - Looks like I was able to score up one of the original induction boxes from a crossfire car, for free nonetheless . Pretty neat stuff how the selenoid pulls the flap inside open.

So, looking at this thing, I'm thinking the best way to go about using it w/a TBI set-up would be to mount the box onto the hood, and see where the opening touches the air cleaner lid w/the hood closed, then cut a hole in the lid for the air to flow through. The question is, where might I be able to find some air-filter material that I could install so that there isn't a bunch of dirt and unwanted crap getting into the motor?

Also, if I were to just install the box w/the selenoid and moving parts removed, would the flap stay open the whole time, or is there a chance it could shut while driving?

Lastly, should I leave the stock TBI air ducting from the front of the engine bay to the air cleaner on? I was thinking it might be pretty cool to run the stock air ducting and the functional hood scoop stuff together, sorta dual-snorkel style I guess.

Thanks!

 

I have an 83 TA hood and the plastic ducting for the air induction sitting here in my shop - not the parts for the air cleaner, but the one for the hood.

Makes no sense for TPI, but can easily work for TBI and obviously was available on the carbed cars.

 

Here's another idea I had today. How about running both a dual snorkel intake set-up under the hood, and the hood scoop ducting together, sort of triple-snorkel style? This should at the very least, provide much better airflow than the stock TBI set-up, am I right?

Also, what would be the easiest way to do this? Could I use a dual snorkel set-up off another car (F-body or otherwise) and do it? Or should I just modify my existing set-up to do all this?

 

The lid for the hoods air box may just fit on the TBI air cleaner.
Or you could fine a complete air cleaner for the hood stuff and cutup the 2 to make one work on the TBI and then you could also use the dual snorkle setup on the sides from the early cars.