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Old 10-16-2014, 01:50 PM   #15 (permalink)
tyronasauras
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Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: MI
Posts: 54

grey panther - '02 Mercury Grand Marquis
Team Panther
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Yes, the weight savings seem small. On the other hand, the medical motto "do no harm" seems to apply to ecomodding. I hate to think I work hard on a mod and it makes FE worse. It seems at least that this mod should not hurt FE.

I am working on adding a mid belly pan now. I have a spare hood from a former minor collision with just some cosmetic damage and it is free. I plan to use it for the mid pan and add coroplast that I have to the front and rear of it in channels mounted on the leading and trailing edge of the hood. The hood has structure in it so I won't have to add any substructure to support the coroplast. It will attach with 4 nuts fro easy removal and cleaning. The hood is steel and initially weighed 59 pounds, I was concerned that maybe the weight gain of any belly pan might not offset the potential gains in FE. I lightened the hood to 54# and removed some exhaust weights to get me down to 49#. Deleting 4# of window blocks would get me to 45#, which is similar to what others have added including their aluminum support structures(well maybe on the 3rd version,lol)
I plan to mount it backwards. The mounting is symmetrical so I can mount it either way.
I have read here that flat may not be ideal or desirable so the hood has a nice taper to it. Any advice from the areo wizards?
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