Finished my 24 hour 916/GT engine lid . . . Options

[914-8]

Finished my GT (or, on my car, 916!) engine cover.

Came out nice.

Here"s the starting point yesterday:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=53090

This morning I finished the final fitting and painted it up. Used satin for the frame, and gloss for the grille.

(IMG:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v520/bak535/Picture143.jpg)

And installed it:

(IMG:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v520/bak535/Picture140.jpg)

As some of you know, with a V8, you have to cut off the crossmember under the decklid to clear the air cleaner. (Unless your SBC sits a lot lower in the car than mine, or you have some kind of ultra low air cleaner maybe).

Plus, the crossmember is ugly and I don't think the GT/916 lid used it.

Some of you asked about getting the lid to sit straight. I looked at the pics of the bottom of the GT lid in Brett Johnson's book, and it doesn't have the crossmember, and it uses the torsion spring setup. They may have reinforced the lid in some way that isn't visible? But even so, the stock springs bend it unevenly. I think because the latch is not in the center of the lid.

I assume the factory used lighter tension springs to solve the problem, because the springs for the heavy factory setup (the extra metal and the rain guard are surprisingly heavy!) are way too hard.

So I retensioned the springs using heat and some twisting. I got it to a point where the springs provide maximum lift without tweaking the lid. It's not a perfect solution, because the springs don't hold the lid all the way up, but it's ok. No one ever said being cool would be easy!

Lid at half mast:

(IMG:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v520/bak535/Picture141.jpg)

I think if one really spent some time, you could tweak the springs to get a bit more lift. You'd have to make one side stiffer than the other, to compensate for the offset latch. (Make the driver's side stiffer than the passenger's side). That would be pretty trick. Would take a lot of experimenting, though. I'll try it out later.