An impressive build all around. I vote move the scoop back.
Although. Don't get too mad at me for this. I think I saw a hood for our cars that incorporated the cowl panel into the hood. I am 80% sure it was for sale at a hot rod shop online. I don't have the fab skills so it was not my cup of tea. You on the other hand have mad fab skills....
May have been a one off build but they extended the hood and moved the hinges back. Memory tells me there were able to hide the wipers too.
Welcome to my long winded reply lol. Better get a coffee this might take a bit......
lol..no... I will never get mad at opinions or suggestions or help. It's all very welcome and I like to see and hear differing ideas. Even if they differ from my own as that's why I post on here after all. I'm not on here to grandstand my car build, but more or less for ideas and opinions and to share mine as well.
It's all an unknown and things change as it progresses. As you may have read, I started out with a shaker scoop and discovered there was no way for it to grab fresh air and flow enough with the filter options I needed and to fit the hood. Yes, I could have made it work without a filter, but I'm not willing to compromise efficiency of the engine. I want every hp available, and also filtered air is important for engine longevity.
I am not building a race car, otherwise I would have put a full chassis under it which is a hell of a lot easier. I have had and built some race cars and all out street cars, and then felt disappointed that I could not use them like I wanted. I gave up on trying to "catch the quickest car" mentality because I realized that was a battle no one wins for ever, and it is a race of cubic dollars.
I want to build something that looks as if it could be factory offered, so in that mindset trying to make mods look as unobtrusive as possible given the equipment I am trying to fit in. I want to get in it and drive a few hundred or more miles and not trailer it. I want to hit the freeway and row through the gears, take some corners and drive it like a car should be driven. If you walk up to it in a parking lot you might say, wow that thing has too big of a scoop for a 302, but otherwise you will think it is standard Mustang II. It's also why I wrestle with body mods.
There are things as mentioned in other posts that are inherently ugly on a MII..most cars do have styling deficiencies due to concessions with safety and manufacturing capabilities. We all are aware of the tweaks required to correct these deficiencies but it is either out of our skill range, too expensive, or not worth it to do. I would, if doing this build to correct styling shortfalls, change the location of the front crossmember, I would change out the tail pan and tail lights, I would change the headlights and grille and hood, markers etc. etc., BUT as I fought with doing those things I realized that I still want it to look factory stock as much as possible,
or within stealthy limits anyway. After all, my build was to emulate to some extent Sudden Death. (As it turns out, by the time I finish this I might as well have bought Sudden Death, because I will be in deep on this build lol)
In the case of SD, it has the rear tires to give away it's underlying abilities. Mine will have a scoop. Although, I maintain my way to be more stealthy as people will just say, "what a stupid scoop for 140 hp" as opposed to wow that thing is back halved, must have some rear oats under there...
So to get to your comment...(whew finally you say) ..yes, I thought about that hood from Hairy Glass, and considered it because once painted it would be fairly stealthy, but by the time I realized I might need that space I had already put in a ton of hours on the firewall and cowl, and I didn't want to redo that work, and I didn't want a purely pin on hood, and hinges would be another engineering project. To answer your question or idea though, yes that would have made the scoop easier for sure, and it was a viable idea I considered.
On the scoop topic, having moved it back 3 inches over the cowl (just very roughly at this point) It will serve the purpose, and allow me to fit a 14x3 filter and I can still section the height a bit if I want, as there is about 1/2" clearance from the air cleaner lid to the scoop, but I haven't decided since I like a little clearance around things also. If it ends up a little large for the car, then so be it. It will be painted body color and lets face it , I need the room as I picked a pretty tall intake, and I want a big air filter. On a side note.. if I re engineer the carb base plate I may be able to gain another bit of drop as there is room left...but it may be at the expense of cowl modification, which is a "6 of 1, half dozen of another" proposition at this point, because I don't hate the look of the scoop as much as i thought I would, and cutting into the cowl would open up more work to finish to a sort of stock look.
Here is a pic looking into the scoop.I may add a grille of some sort into it, like a black egg crate mesh or something, not sure yet. Notice the air cleaner is offset, as is the engine. To gain the firewall clearance I could not also get enough sideways adjustment to centre it, so another reason for a large scoop.
Imagine all the air that thing will catch! I better make sure it is attached well...ulp..
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On topic of color I am still deciding. I can't do silver...SD already did it.., Black I like but I've done, and the upkeep is a lot of work and I have cats( another story involving a brand new black ZL-1 Camaro). So at this point in time I have basically come down to three choices. (my interior is black).
1) Stock 78 Mustang Polar White
2) 1969 Mustang Candy Apple Red
3) 1969 Mustang Gulf Stream Aqua
I don't know how to turn on the vote thingy in the post or maybe i could see what other peoples thoughts are...
If I had a red interior I would 100% go white paint, but I have deluxe vinyl black interior, and it is impossible to find a red interior in good shape. Red door panels and dash pad are the stumbling blocks..rest I can buy new..If I had nice white door panels I would do white door panels and seat upholstery with the Aqua as that is a nice combo as well, again the door panels are the stumbling block, but black works with aqua too as does the white with black guts.
I plan to maybe have made a decal of the same size and lettering style as the ones on Boss 429's, but instead it will say BAD BOSS. I liked the movie horrible bosses so fits that way too lol...I also was thinking of custom gauges with bad boss in them as well.. but these are all undecided right now.
Sorry for the article length post!!