Thursday, October 21, 2010

Not according to Plan Series 1

When my friend A_Gorman decided he wanted to delete the rather large hood scoop on his new 5.0L Mustang, he did what any reasonable person would do; Research.

Before
In Ford's manual on the 2011 Mustang, it indicated the the hood scoop is held on with 3M double-sided adhesive tape, so it should be easy. Out came the 10lb fishing line and cutting began, however, for some reason the line kept breaking and the scoop remained stubbornly in place.

Next, he did what any local Mustang owner I know does when faced with adversity, drop by Grand Touring Concepts and have their dedicated staff solve the problem.

Since the seal had already been broken, I decided to carry on where Andrew left off. I did ask the question "are you completely sure it's just 3M tape?" satisfied when told the Service Manual said so, I carried on.

After "sawing" the entire perimeter of tape and the scoop wouldn't let go I began to suspect my hunch had been right.

I removed the factory hood blanket and discovered what I had feared, four 10mm bolts. Knowing now that there were holes in the hood meant that the scoop had to stay on, but since we'd cut all of the 3M tape, it need to come off, be re-taped, and reinstalled.

Closing the hood, we wrestled the scoop from it's mount and discovered another set of 4 holes that had the scoop secured with one time use plugs and a locating dowel.

Grand Touring Concepts 2011 Mustang GT Hood Stripe Kit  
Of course these plugs broke upon tampering and new ones needed to be sourced on a Saturday evening. Using some locally sourced brand-X jobber units I fashioned new Grand Touring Concepts Hood Scoop Mounting Pins.

9 Holes! That's good round of drinking golf at the official course of GTC
We painstaking re-taped the scoop edges, did surface prep and re-installed it to it's original home.

Behold the finished product!
After!

Well at least I have some practice now. LOL