Engine Cover Prep.

One of the final challenges I will need to face is modifying the engine cover to fit the new engine. There are two different areas of concern here:

1) The FC engine had the carberator on the left side of the engine. To accomodate this, the engine cover has a relatively big (draggy) blister on the side and a flat flange on top for the FC scoop to attach. Neither of these is needed or desired for the new engine setup. So modificattion nuber one is 'shaving' off this blister and getting rid of the flat flange area.

2) The Honda Fit engine is a little taller than the FC engine in the middle, so I will need to make the engine cover higher to make room for the intake plenum and air filter areas.

One of my bodywork 'aces in the hole' is that I acquired one of John LaRue's old FF (Kent) engine covers in a lot of spare parts I bought on ApexSpeed a while back.

It does not have the blistered area like my body work does.

It also does have the higher middle section that fares in the back of the main roll hoops and should make (I hope) enough room to clear the Honda intake.

Now my original hope was to just use this engine cover instead of the FC unit, but there were a couple of problems with this approach. First it has had the rear flange areas that mate with the lower transmission covers removed. And second it had about 10 lbs of bondo bonded on to it so it weighs a ton.

So I decided that maybe a better approach was to take the best of both covers and combine them.

My initial thought was to cast a mold of the desired areas (marked by the masking tape above)...

While that idea worked out OK, I was too impatient to wait until I could borrow some mold release compound from my dad's shop. I waxed the area and coated it with non-stick oven spray...

And I got a fairly useful mold out of the process. It will definely be good enough to modify the green FC cover if I decide to go that route...

BUT, the red paint stuck to the mold in most places (should have waited and gotten the release agent from dad...

So I may end up going with plan "B" and just cut out the sections I want to use and bond them to the original engine cover. I will see what looks like the better approach once the car is back in the shop...