Its kinda heavy but not when you compare it to the weight of the hood so its not really a weight advantage removing it.
Its actually designed as sound proofing but to be honest so much vibration is transmitted to the hood anyways its all but redundant much more useful on the smaller engined cars, the V8 rumble will get past any insulation since its a very low frequency.
Because it is black and so close to the top of the engine it does act as a bit of a temp insulator on the 55 and unfortunately it keeps hot air floating about at airbox level and that serves to heat the intake air and as everybody knows the cooler the incoming air the better for a performance oriented engine.
We remove it on about 90% of the SLK55's we get here at the owners requests and in doing so your allowing the whole hood to act as a radiator and we have seen noticeable reduction in bay temps on the cars we have tested, its not going to hurt your paintwork and we have never had even one mention of it doing so, remember that the airbox itself sits atop the engine and if its bottom section does not feel the effects of the heat a steel hood wont mind at all and if you pop open the hood you will notice how close the chassis is to the headers and it survives without any paint damage.
Another common job is wrapping the headers up to keep the temp down that also heats them more and help with scavenging.
Only dis-advantage is it takes longer for the hood to cool down enough that you can clean it without it going all streaky.
__________________ One thing you will learn with German cars - If it's simple it ain't happening. |