Hood Louvers

[LPM606]

With all the serious Mod Fever going around with many new bumpers, etc. in the club, it was about time for me to install the Poison Spyder Hood louvers I got a while back... I wasn't crazy about the look of these - it pretty much takes up the whole hood, but it offered, to my mind, the best balance of ease of installation and amount of hood removed for ventilation. Now that is on the Jeep, it is growing on my fairly quickly.  Looks especially bad-ass from inside the Jeep.  While certainly not a "how to" pictorial, here was the basic process. 

#1 - Cut template out and affix to hood using the hood bumpers as mounts - notice I have both of the bumpers!


#2 We center punched each of the circles, then removed the template and drilled the corners of the cut-outs with a 1" hole saw.


#3 - We drew lines with a sharpie to connect the dots and the Mark cut out the first side, careful to just cut through the hood and not the X-Brace beneath.


#4 - First Side finished


#5 - The "Installer Grade 1" goes for another promotion, tackling the grinder and cutting the other side of the hood.


#6 - Both sides Done


#7 - Now, the louver was put back in place using the bumpers and loop as a guide. We drilled the four corner holes of the louver and secured them with the supplied screws and nuts and then drilled the 20 remaining holes.  We had to remove the 4 corner screws to take the louver off again to clean up the burs from the holes and hit all the drilled surfaces with some paint before placing the louver back on and securing all the screws, washers and nuts. 
   

Took us somewhere between four and five hours altogether.  Somewhere along the way, the second hood bumper got lost in the shuffle, as you may have noticed it is not on there in the last picture... We pretty much tore the garage apart and could not figure out what happened to it...Thanks to Mark for the use of his facility and for all the instruction, as usual!

[NewRide]

Nice job !!!

[Paul Hittie]

Looks good, you have earned another merit badge!


Sent from my electronic tether

[J's Jeep]

Gives it a unique look.  Nice!
(I am guessing the bumper fell down and is lodged in the engine compartment somewhere)

[LPM606]

We opened the hood and searched the engine compartment three separate times... If its in there, it gets the ninja stealth award!

[gogolen]

Good job Ed.  Are you going to leave the louver black, or have it painted to match?

[LPM606]

It was $20.00 more for the black powder coated version and the jeep already has a red/black theme going, so I will probably leave it as is... Besides, if I painted the hood to match, the rest of the Jeep would look so crappy it would be really weird... Unless, after the paint job, I just got some branches and rubbed them all over the hood to stripe it up to match the rest of the body...

[J's Jeep]

Saw the louvers today at Tony's wrench fest...I like the black...nice accent to the red!