Basically what I did was to trim away a little bit of the grill at the top of the headlight to make a space between the hood and the grill. I then removed the stock diverter that sits in front of the stock snorkel. Next I cut and 'persuaded' a piece of sheet metal to fit in the area you see in photo four. The sheet metal took a a lot of fine tweaking to get it to fit and allow the hood to close properly. Once the sheet metal fit I used contact cement to attach 1 1/2" insulating foam to the inside of the hood. The foam seals the space between the sheet metal plate and the hood so that it forms a channel from the cut out in the grill to the snorkel. There are also several small pieces of foam glued to the snorkel and the hood to fill out any rough areas. The foam is not glued between the snorkel and the sheet metal so that the snorkel can be easily removed. The sheetmetal plate is held on by the edges of the grill and the snorkel. It is not permanently attached to facilitate easy removal if needed.
In order to make the
passenger side cutout even less noticeable, I painted the top edge of the grill over the
driver side headlight black to match. You would never notice it if you didn't know it was there.
Note: I have calculated the surface area size of the opening between the grill and hood to be close in surface area to that of the stock snorkel opening and larger than that of the opening in the throttle body. This allows clean cool air to be ducted relatively smoothly with little restriction directly into the stock snorkel. The opening can be enlarged some depending on how much you are willing to take off of the grill. Enlarging the opening too much may weaken the grill.
At some point I intend to replace the tube between the air box and throttle body with one that is smooth walled in order to improve the airflow.
The cost of this little mod runs about $6 for the sheet metal and the foam.
I'll let you know if there is any difference in gas mileage after I put a few tanks of gas through it. Before the snorkel I got 14.5-15.5mpg. We'll see if there is any difference with the cool air intake mods.
John
];')
Click the thumbnails to make them large.
Can you see the intake?
How about now?
Here's a closeup.
Here is what it looks like on the inside showing the sheetmetal plate as it is in place. Note the small piece of foam attached to the snorkel on the right side. This foam fills a gap between the snorkel and the stock foam when the hood is closed. There is also a 3/4" sliver of foam placed under the snorkel to fill the gap and make the transition from the plate smoother.
Here is the inside of the hood showing the stock and added foam seals. You also probably want to tape the area indicated or you will draw in some warm air from under the hood. The way that the stock air diverter (which was removed) is located, it draws most of the air through the hole in the hood sheet metal which ducts to the area behind the air filter box. You can see where this ducting is at the arrow over to the left side of the photo.