Strokerswild
Shallow and Pedantic
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2014
- Threads
- 76
- Messages
- 7,115
- Reaction score
- 6,490
- Location
- Southern MN
- First Name
- Dave
- Vehicle(s)
- Things With Wheels
- Thread starter
- #1
First off, I have to preface this thread by proclaiming my utter and complete dislike for the stock S550 5.0 intake cover, which I turned up my nose at the first time I saw a picture of one. Blah. Compared to the S197 version (which doesn’t fit the S550 if using the stock intake tube, BTW – I tried) it’s just plain huge and ugly. Not to mention I’m not a big fan of large engine covers to start with, so off it came.
After a summer of cruise night shows, I got to thinking that the engine bay needed a little visual pop to break up all the black plastic-ness. I considered painting my coil covers body color, but decided I wanted something a little different so I finally settled on the chrome Ford Racing coil covers. Despite the exterior of my car now being nearly devoid of chrome, other than the center cap ponies and the headlamp surrounds, it was a nice visual upgrade under the hood to break things up. But the missing engine cover sparked my OCD in the areas of the fuel rails, so I started to revisit using it.
I took my engine cover and separated it into its two parts, painted the outer portion black using plastic paint, added red accent decals to the recesses, and reassembled and reinstalled it. Hmm. A little better maybe, but still not it. Lipstick on a pig came to mind. I think I had grown to like the exposed center portion of the intake manifold, shades of GT350 perhaps.
So, with the GT350 fuel rail “covers” with their engine builder badges in mind, I proceeded to design some simple fuel rail covers to fab out of formed sheet metal that would cover the majority of the larger hoses and wiring atop the engine, yet leave the intake manifold center visible. I made standoffs to screw onto the four studs on the intake and serve as mounts and then created a design for the covers, sent it out for laser cutting and forming, and had the resulting parts powder coated to nearly match the texture of the OEM cam covers. A pair of “Powered by Ford Racing” fender badges finish them off (originally the idea was to reuse my castoff chrome 5.0 fender badges).
And there you have it. I’m pretty pleased at how it all turned out for a prototype kind of thing, it's more of a balance between no engine cover and stock. I'm going to shorten the standoffs a bit to pull the covers down another 1/4 - 3/8" since I have the hose clearance to do so underneath. We'll see where it goes from here.
Now for that Ford Racing CAI, assuming it ever sees the light of day…
After a summer of cruise night shows, I got to thinking that the engine bay needed a little visual pop to break up all the black plastic-ness. I considered painting my coil covers body color, but decided I wanted something a little different so I finally settled on the chrome Ford Racing coil covers. Despite the exterior of my car now being nearly devoid of chrome, other than the center cap ponies and the headlamp surrounds, it was a nice visual upgrade under the hood to break things up. But the missing engine cover sparked my OCD in the areas of the fuel rails, so I started to revisit using it.
I took my engine cover and separated it into its two parts, painted the outer portion black using plastic paint, added red accent decals to the recesses, and reassembled and reinstalled it. Hmm. A little better maybe, but still not it. Lipstick on a pig came to mind. I think I had grown to like the exposed center portion of the intake manifold, shades of GT350 perhaps.
So, with the GT350 fuel rail “covers” with their engine builder badges in mind, I proceeded to design some simple fuel rail covers to fab out of formed sheet metal that would cover the majority of the larger hoses and wiring atop the engine, yet leave the intake manifold center visible. I made standoffs to screw onto the four studs on the intake and serve as mounts and then created a design for the covers, sent it out for laser cutting and forming, and had the resulting parts powder coated to nearly match the texture of the OEM cam covers. A pair of “Powered by Ford Racing” fender badges finish them off (originally the idea was to reuse my castoff chrome 5.0 fender badges).
And there you have it. I’m pretty pleased at how it all turned out for a prototype kind of thing, it's more of a balance between no engine cover and stock. I'm going to shorten the standoffs a bit to pull the covers down another 1/4 - 3/8" since I have the hose clearance to do so underneath. We'll see where it goes from here.
Now for that Ford Racing CAI, assuming it ever sees the light of day…
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