G-body Roll Call

[NOT A TA]

I was curious how much work was involved, did you gain any clearance?

The inner support doesn't allow more clearance in the center for a NA car. It appears the inner structure was designed to give more clearance for turbo tubing that was offset toward the drivers side. I just put the hood on because I thought it'd look cool and I think the stock hood looks too much lower than the trunk on the bu's for a flat hood (IMO) when you look at the car from the side. When I put a real engine in it to replace the 229 I may cut out some of the inner structure if more clearance is needed for the air cleaner.

Just so you know, the hood is not a simple bolt on. The body lines in the Buick hood don't line up with the header. The rear corners of the hood need to be massaged to line up with the Malibu fenders at the cowl. There's also a height difference between the header and the Buick hood and the leading edge of the hood is set back about 1/4" compared with a Malibu. So some creative, artistic type bodywork needs to be done to the header to build it up to the hood at the gap, mold in the body lines, and extend it back toward the hood to narrow the gap.