Slight Hood Clearance Issue

[darkforcejackal]

My hood has never quite closed perfectly, because of the turbo's size (T3/T4) and/or IAP mani with Nismo mounts. It touches the turbo slightly and has eaten through the stock engine bay padding at one spot...also causes a bit of extra vibration. I've been meaning to address this for a while...

Basically, I need a small bit of extra hood clearance where the turbo is to avoid vibrations and other potential problems. Here's what i've come up with:

-- Cut out the metal hood support for a few inches around the turbo area to clear up maybe, say, almost an inch or so and see if that does the trick - perhaps even replacing the stock padding again

-- Add washers to hood bolts to raise the back of the hood a little - secondary benefit of added cooling, but a potential rain-water-in-engine risk?

Here are some terrible illustrations...

Passenger side hood clearance:

Turbo having burnt away some of the padding:

Padding mark on turbo:

That's where i'm at currently, any insights before I go for it? Or is this just straight-forward/everyone's done it...? :?

[j-z]

why would you even run the hood blanket if it was hitting your turbo from the start? def get rid of that asap and go from there. that might be all the clearance you need. if need be cut out the hood bracing around the area where clearance is needed. i had to do this on my prelude to clear my wastegate.

[AZhitman]

I'm in the same boat, but mine actually required a hole THROUGH the hood, LOL.

Pics coming soon.

[GEO]

I am not having that issue, go S14's! Anyway, liek stated above. Take out that padding and replace it with some aluminum.

[Florida240sx]

Mine doesn't touch, but that might be because it burnt it first lol. I'm putting a scoop of some kind on mine. Will help it cool. Or might just go attack a dsm hood and steal their bump.

[darkforcejackal]

I kept the hood's padding because it was obvious that with or without it, it was going to touch. So based on what I was seeing with the padding there was less vibration (in the meantime while I decided what to do), and a heat barrier to prevent the hood/body of the car from getting too hot (insulation type of thing). It's already starting to touch the metal on the hood behind it...so obviously the answer is gonna be to cut the bracing and see if it clears from there.

So I guess i'll start working on this ASAP and i'll keep everyone up to date...thanks for the replies..

[Structure240sx]

just take an angle grinder to those hood braces. i took chunks out of them to fit my intake manifold. i then would leave the padding to protect from heat and ****ing up your paint

[LEMHEAD16]

MY padding almost caught fire so I scrapped it right away. I woud do the same with yours.

[darkforcejackal]

Hey thanks a lot for the replies guys...

just take an angle grinder to those hood braces. i took chunks out of them to fit my intake manifold. i then would leave the padding to protect from heat and ****ing up your paint

That's exactly what I was thinking....well except that i'm old school and'll probably end up using a hacksaw or something similar....

MY padding almost caught fire so I scrapped it right away. I woud do the same with yours.

This was really my only concern with the padding, having wanted to keep it. It didn't seem too prone to this based on my experiences, but I don't really want to play around either..

Does the padding also insulate sound? I'm having a hard time deciding on whether to keep the stuff or not...don't want to burn the hood or cause extra heat to it and the body. It must there for a decent reason....I dunno...

What are the rest of you guys doing with it?

[darkforcejackal]

Once using a hacksaw proved rather difficult I decided (insane) to just "crush" the support bracing with a hammer from the underside where it was touching.

This actually has fixed 90% of the problems, the turbo still ever so slightly touches it seems...but all the vibration and rattling sounds are over with, and the hood closes comfortably now!

When I get a chance at a good power tool, i'll trim the bracing off properly.

As for raising the hood with washers and longer bolts for cooling, anyone done this successfully? I hear it's pretty straight-forward...see the following:

Under "Simple Vented Hood"http://www.cardomain.com/ride/836797/3