Ski bum metalworking 101
So, you've got a large-ish hole in your hood where the intake manifold of your swapped 3.4 doesn't quite fit in there. Here are your options:
1. Leave the hole and give the top end of the motor a rinse every so often with rainwater and snow.
2. Body lift.
3. Awesome racer hood scoop from Summit, Jegs, or similar.
4. Awesome fiberglass scooped hood, hood pins, etc...
5. Janky DIY hood scoop/bump/shaker/whatever.
I opted for option 5 on account of a handful of deciding factors, the most important one being finances. It doesn't functionally need a scoop and I'd really rather keep the hood mostly sealed from the elements, so I figured I would create some sort of bump to clear the manifold.
So, off to find a sheet of workable metal to make the bump. A proper sized sheet of aluminum is almost 15 bucks! That's a 12 pack of watery mexican beer and then some, for you teatotalers out there. Almost immediately my wife (she has an eye for these things) noticed an alternative source of sheet aluminum:
These babies are $2.50 a piece and plenty of material for my purposes. I went wild and bought two.
We made a form out of some old "repurposed" pallet wood and some cam straps. (sorry no pics, it was cocktail hour and the metal shop was in full swing) A number of rounds of hammering later you end up with something like this:
Like a shiny handmade beautiful dog turd of love:
Sure, it could have probably used a little more finishing work. But that would betray our household philosophy of "just good enough". So on she went, time to say goodbye to that distracting, quivering bit of metal staring at me through the windshield.
I'm a pilot, I like airplanes. Old airplanes have rivets. Lots and lots of rivets. My old truck would be cooler if it were an airplane:
The sweetest looking airplanes are all either stripped of their paint and polished obsessively, or painted in cool wannabe military schemes. In lieu of spending the next three years literally polishing a turd, on went a coat of paint and off we went to the desert.
The dog was so excited to get out of the house she went a little overboard the first couple days:
If anyone needs a custom hot rod hood bump for their 3.4 swap, contact me via PM and we'll work something out. $299 shipped, $296.50 if you provide your own "beware of dog" sign or equivalent.
Nasdrovia