We wanted to do something different with the hood. We had a 6-pack fiberglass hood made, but there is no company (that we could find) that makes light weight springs for this particular year Barracuda. So we decided to make the hood air operated from inside the car. As with everything with this car, we have to fabricate things, but that’s what will make it unusual and unique.

We found some 4” stroke X 1-1/2” o.d. Stainless Steel cylinders. John fabricated brackets to mount the cylinders inside the fender-wells. We called Air Lift and received their part # 25592 Air Compressor unit.  It comes with all wiring, tubing and fittings that we needed. We will mount the Air Compressor unit under the driver’s seat when we get the interior installed. The hood will lift with a switch from inside the car and can be released either inside the car or by the grill.

Now that the air cylinders are completed, we can install the front fenders. 

Since we installed a 440 engine in the car, we felt that everyone should know that, so we contacted Piedmont Metal and had them fabricate a 440 emblem from our pattern for each fender then we mirror polished them prior to installation.

When we put the fenders on the car, we wanted a unique look, so we made Penta washers with Flat Head Allen bolts in the center.  We aligned the front fenders and hood, installed the front grill shell, lower valance and front bumper.

We couldn’t find any Air Filter that would fit under the 6-pack hood and look trick. So we contacted Paul Smith at Smith’s Custom Fabrication and asked him to fabricate one. Here is his dialog on how he made the air filter:

“The first thing I had to do was to determine the offset of the motor to the left hand side of the car to make the base line up with the center of the hood scoop. The center piece was made first with two ears (one off each side) and was made out of 1/8” aluminum.  The CNC Carburetor Air Bell Rings were located on the carburetors“.

“I had to make a metal banded ring around the base to attach the lid of the air cleaner.  I then had to roll and form the outer ring of the air cleaner top.  The corners of the air cleaner top were notched and the back edge had to be clearanced for the wiper motor“.

“Next I had to form both back corners of the air cleaner top to match the radius of the lid.  To have a clean front opening, I used 3/8” round tubing to make the openings to attach the screens and give it a nice rounded edge.” 

The object was to have a functional Air Cleaner that worked with the hood scoop and to have a muscle car look. The car was already put together, giving no margin for error.

After Paul Smith finished his metal work, the project was handed over to Daniel Bell of Daniel’s Hot Rods in Talking Rock, GA. and the imperfections were then smoothed out with Bondo.

After the body work was completed, the top was primed and blocksanded and was then ready to receive the paint.

The base was prepped, epoxy primed and sprayed flat black.

The top was now sprayed with R&M Diamont Basecoat.

After appropriate flash time, the basecoat was covered with 3 coats of R&M Diamont DC92 Clear, which is where is received its glossy shine.

After drying overnight, the front screens were installed and it was now ready for show.

01-26-2004 - We contacted Benny Martin at Vision 8 Rod & Custom, Inc in Cleveland, GA.  We told him that we were looking for outside mirrors for the Barracuda and he sent these new Street Rod mirrors.  Here is a picture of them (before we installed them).

We contacted Daniel's Hot Rods and had Daniel Bell paint the mirrors with a matt black finish.  We installed the mirrors and now we can concentrate on getting the side windows and electric window operators from Specialty Power Windows installed.

01/2004 - We wanted to do something different with the grill.  Since some of the original ribs in the grill were broken, we chose to go with a polished stainless steel flame design.  We called DJ Motorsports and they sent us a section of pre-cut and polished "flames".  Here are a couple of pictures of what it looks like.  We will take more pictures once the pieces are installed.

This is before we trimmed it to size.

We had to modify the grill to accept the flames.  We primed and painted the remainder of the grill with gloss black and silver and added the flames.  We then installed the new parking light lenses and gaskets that we received from Year One.

Here is the grill insert inside the parking light.  

Here is a picture of the grill installed back on the car.

11/2003 - Here are some NEW pictures of how the car looks now. It really is starting to look like a car (instead of a shell).