leave hood on? or take it off?

[calpolymustang]

im going to be running my 66 fastback at the 1/4 mile track and should be running high 14s. I would like to know who has experience both with a hood on and without a hood, and how much a difference it should make on my 289. i got .1 to .2 better just by removing my air cleaner. i cant imagine that there would be that much more drag force by not having a hood though

 

[66P51GT]

IMHO it is negligable. More Drag, Less Weight. Not worth the effort, especially if you have a nice paintjob and alignment is good. Aligning hoods is a major pain. Also, NHRA rules may prohibit it - don't really know.

 

[66 BLAKE 96]

Removing the hood entirely? That doesn't sound like a good idea at all. Especially just to eek out a high 14 sec run.

 

[gp001]

Take the hood off. Remove the trunk lid, interior (except driver seat of course), heater, headlights, turn signals (front & rear), grille, horns, etc and it will be a doosy of a run!

 

[SandSprite]

Which track are you going to? Also, I'm surprised you picked up any time without an air cleaner. I always heard the base is supposed to help direct air into the carb, kinda like a very short velocity stack.

 

[67CoupeDriva]

Your engine probably isn't going to live very long if you make very many runs without any air cleaner at all.

 

[1320stang]

Leave your hood on, if you run without a hood, you'll have to run an air cleaner as a flame arrestor. I had a tunnel ram with dual quads and I had to put a air cleaner or some sort of scoop with an arrestor of some sort.

Running with out a hood at 14 seconds is not necessary and looks kindy hill billyish.

As far as running without an aircleaner, we do it all the time. It won't hurt your engine unless you have a gravel return road or pit way out in the dirt. As long as it's paved where you race, running without an aircleaner is okay.