Body - Firewall

Another part that will need some serious modification is the cowl and firewall. This is for several reasons.....

Firstly the sleek look that the speedstar coupe has is contributed to by the fact that the bonnet or hood runs all the way from the grille right back to the doors on the side and right back to the windscreen on top. It will look like this one.

Now compare that to the original car where the bonnet stops about 6 inches or so before the doors on the sides.....then on the top you can see there is a big "V" shape in the cowl that the bonnet meets up with. There is nothing wrong with that except it does detract from the more sleek look in the first pic. Its pretty subtle but it is these subtleties that give the overall sleek look. So because of that I need to make a bit more work for myself.

Now there are two more reasons I need to rework the cowl and firewall. The first one is fairly straight forward....I want the wipers to park down below bonnet line like this. Again this helps to streamline the car and make it more like the first picture above. The funny thing is the car in that top picture cheats as it doesn't even have wipers. Its a California car and it rains so infrequently over there that wipers aren't mandatory, or at least I hear thats why they get away with it. I will definitely be having wipers though, cause it always rains in Auckland and to achieve the same sleek look I need to extend the windscreen below bonnet line so the wipers can tuck down underneath when they are in the park position.

The last reason is because I will be using part of the firewall as an air box for the engine air filter and induction. You will recall from an earlier blog Engine - Intake Manifold Modifications that the engine will now suck air in from the back rather than from one side. So the intention is that all this ugly induction stuff will be tucked away inside a box in the firewall and that box will have vents like you see on a normal car where the wipers park, that will allow it to suck in air from below the windscreen. 

Actually I learnt something about this recently. Have you ever seen those 70's Camaro's that have their air scoop on the bonnet pointing backwards with the opening up against the windscreen? You'd think putting the scoop on the other way around with the opening at the front "Scooping" the air world work better right? Well actually, no...... with those backward facing ones, they benefit from an area of high pressure. The wind hitting the windscreen has to go somewhere. Yes some goes to the sides and some over the top of the car, but some is also forced downwards into that rear facing scoop. I am hoping that I will also get the benefit of this forced air with my rear facing intake manifold.

You will also recall I am making an Engine Cover. The idea being that this will butt up to the firewall and help to conceal all the induction plumbing.

So yes I need to modify my firewall. Below is a picture of what I hope it will look like once done, but I still haven't quite planned out how the air box will work as it will need to have everything inside it but I will still need to be able to get in there to change and service the air filter of course. Anyway a bit more thinking on that before I hopefully arrive at something like this.

....and that is a long way away from the original one. 

So there is only one thing for it. Cut the cowl off!

Now while I have the cutoff disk at hand I also want to cut off the lip on the back of the car. It looked like this.

But now looks like this.

This will give a nice line from which to run the boot floor down to the diff. It will hopefully look as good as this one day.

As an aside Bob & Freda called in to see how the Coupe was progressing.....here are a couple of shots of their 32 Coupe. It really gets you motivated seeing a finished car like this! Thanks for calling in Bob & Freda.