Drove the Talon down to Lincoln, NE for the SCCA Solo Nationals last month. Decided I need to loose weight, from the car, not me. Cheapest thing I thought of was the hood.

Steps:
1. Remove steel skin from hood structure
2. Buy $45 commercial grade aluminum sheet from Metal Supermarket
3. Cut to size
4. Drill holes and Rivet
5. Form edges
6. Sprinkle flat black on it so it's not so shiney

Voila, 16lbs saved.







Unfortunately, it didn't help my results but it was worth the small effort. At least the car survived the 1700km trip there, the competition runs, and about 1300km trip home until the gas tank decided to try get away from the car.



Oh yeah, and the alternator change about the same time.
Next year, more power, more camber, and I'm towing down!

p.s. been a long time, great to see the board still humming along

Hello Tashko. A while since we heard from you. Excellent weight reduction idea you have to shed a little weight; who needs a heavy "skin"...

Feel free to le me know if you are ever coming around this way. I now have a keginator in the garage so no shortage of beer.

Ghislain

Hey Tashko, good to see you again. Great idea on the hood. I especially like the cutout for the tbelt cover. Didn't some of the early cars have flat hoods? I wonder how they got away with that.

Based purely on assumption and not fact, I think the flat hoods only came on the 1.8L cars(no need for the clearance). Later on the decision was made not to bother with 2 different hoods.

It was great to drive the Talon again. I forget how much I enjoy it. I'm hoping to get some time to fix it up, bit of a bucket at the moment.

If only the flat hoods were aluminium it would've saved me some time. I actually did intend to try put the bump in but gave up. It was impossible to form without making a tool. Since I was doing this the morning of the day I was leaving I had to get it done. I was surprised how heavy that steel skin is. 23lbs is a lot.

I think things are settling down now with the kids I should be on the board more. Interested to see what people have been doing to their DSMS.

t.

Are you concerned about water getting in there?

Aside from that, it actually looks pretty cool.

If you were going to daily drive it, you need to cover over the timing belt cover. Some water does get it and collect on the valve cover. I'm sure there's a way to prevent/limit the water without covering the timing belt. If I decide to go aluminum I'll figure it out when I make the replacement.

Since I only did this quickly for the competition so I wasn't concerned with water and corrosion between steel/aluminum. I'd put some insulation like tape between the skin and brace if I was doing this long term.

Use the old timing cover to make a mold out of aluminum and have it welded over the hole.