SRT-8 Daytona Clone

With the hood back out of the way it was time to start figuring out how I was going to build the recessed cowl to cover everything.

Once I had established the curve of the cowl I had to figure out a fresh air inlet. I kicked around a lot of different ideas for the grill itself and decided since I was not going to re install the old cowl that I would use adapt the grill work from it into my new piece.

I used scrap pieces of the rubber molding I was going to use to seal the cowl to the windshield bed to maintain my surface relationships while I fit up the various parts. 

Once I was done with the grill insert I had to build a short duct to move the air from the inlet to the fresh air inlet box in the engine bay. The last picture is of the floor of that duct mocked into place.

After building the top and the sides of the fresh air duct I removed it to prime, paint and seal the interior of the box before installing it permanently to the cowl.

In order to minimize the water infiltration into the area around the wiper studs I had to build two wells around the studs with a tight fitting rubber grommet. I back engineered the well from the grommet that would fit. It required a 1" hole and the well needed to be 1 1/2" to clear the wiper base. I punched out some .040 steel to create the bottom of the well and used some thin walled 1 1/2 inch steel tube for the well wall.  I welded the washer to the bottom of the tube first then fit the grommet in . After re installing the cowl I slowly clearanced around the stud until the whole well assembly slid down over the stud.

Once I had  the stud well fit up I tacked it from the top side then I removed the cowl so that I could weld it up from the bottom side and then trim off the top flush.

The third picture is of the cowl re installed with the well in place.

With the upper cowl established I started to close out the forward section starting with a "Z" flange with a top step to give me a front edge to go to. This worked out good because I already had flange to cover the firewall batting that I could drill into and avoid compromising the sub cowl.

I fit up some pieces to finish the surround to support the top closure.The last two pictures show the top closure on the forward section of the cowl.

There is quite a bit more to do here but just to see if everything was holding station and to try to get some feeling of accomplishment after messing with this for so long, I put the windshield base seal on and fit the rear hood seal to see how I all looks.