As you all know, the 3rdGen Formula came with what is termed a "power bulge" hood. Basically, this is a funny looking asymmetrical tear drop, offset hood scoop that is non-functional, intended only for decoration and to make a bold statement that what is under the hood is so powerful that it's making a dent trying to get out. You may have wondered why Pontiac produced this hood setup, this particular design, when cars with similar hoods (like the Dodge Daytona and the Dodge Neon) have simply pressed out bubbles with no block off plates.

Does this hood look familiar?

You bet it does! If you know anything about 3rdGens, you will know that this hood is the exact same hood used on the '82 to '84 Pontiac T/As. Upon closer inspection, your power bulge hood looks like something should go in it, something is missing, like it's been gutted, but what was originally installed there? What used to be there before the factory ripped it out and sealed it off with a block off plate and a sound deadening mat?

The answer to that question is that it was a factory cowl induction system used on the High Output engines in the '83 and '84 Pontiac Trans-Ams, and it fed cold dense air to the Rochester 4 barrel carburetor under engine load (pedal to the metal) conditions. It worked nicely, maybe even better than the dual snorkel found on the Z28s.

Now, you can use this very same system as well for a low cost (now) factory system.

The opening of this power bulge hood extends back into a sweet spot for cold air pickup, the base of your windshield. There is a boundary layer created here at speed, a super cold, dense pocket which the scoop intake extends into. Cold air is better than hot air and produces more power per comparable amount of intake charge.

The power bulge hood ... Could it be the same hood that graced the '83 and '84 Trans-Ams? The very same one that had the functional factory cowl induction setup? Yes! A simple metal plate had been inserted into the scoop opening and the scoop system has been removed. All the bolt holes for mounting the factory functional hood scoop assembly are present. This was a '83/'84 style hood, just reused with no scoop attached and the rear opening blocked off! Pontiac didn't make a whole new batch of hoods for the 3rdGen Formula. They just tooled back up and remanufactured the '82-'84 style hoods again.

I decided to set out onto the WWW to find a working scoop setup. With everyone throwing out their carbs for TPI, it should be simple to find one of these units!

It was!

I did a search on the Parts For Sale area of www.thirdgen.org, and turned up nothing. I posted a "Wanted To Buy" ad and then hit the "For Sale" ads for one last look at anything that I needed. I hit the search key (alt F) and must have hit enter by accident. It brought up my last search and lo and behold, it found a match!. At the exact same time (within minutes) of me posting my WTB ad, someone else had posted a FS ad with the scoop setup that I was looking for. I sent an email message, hoping to catch the seller still on-line. I did, the scoop was sold within ten minutes of his posting the ad.

Now, that's how this site is supposed to work, and when it does, it's great! Three weeks later, I had the scoop setup in my possession. Here's how you can add the same setup to your 3rdGen Formula. This system will NOT work with TPI. It is intended for TBI and carb setups only. Sorry. You can't modify it for TPI unless you are really, really creative, and it's probably just cheaper to buy a SLP cold air box for your TPI instead of try to adapt this setup for your TPI system.

I don't see any way to adapt it to TPI.

The first thing you need to do is to test the solenoid on your scoop. Ground your solenoid properly, and run a hot lead from the battery to the hot lead of the solenoid. Your scoop should flip open. You won't see this, since the flapper valve is up inside of the scoop assembly, but you can tell. The scoop will jump in your hand, the solenoid will energize, and the lever to the solenoid will move back and forth, opening or closing the flapper valve.

If the scoop works properly, continue on with the installation. If this solenoid does not respond correctly, you can skip the rest of this article dealing with electrical wiring. Your scoop is dead, get another one or fix the solenoid yourself. Pontiac no longer makes this part. You will have to figure out some other way to duct cold air to your carb / TBI unit. You may be able to wire the scoop open and continue with the setup below. If you choose that route, read on. Skip anything dealing with running wires though. You can still use this system, but it will be a 'dead' system.

Now, assuming you have a good operating scoop and solenoid (and all the parts listed above), you are ready to start this project.

You will notice that there is a sound deadening mat of some unknown fibrous material tacked to the underside of your hood. You must remove this (or either get creative and cut around the scoop) in order to install your system. There should be either eight or nine snap in rubber pins. You'll see them as 2" wide black plastic circles located around the material of the mat itself. Use some needle nose pliers to carefully remove these (they just pop out), then carefully remove the mat itself. You might want to wear goggles and a mask, since there is a lot of dust buildup, etc. under this mat, and you don't want fibers, dust, etc. getting into your nose, eyes, etc. Notice the beauty of your hood supports now, why they ever covered this up, I don't know. Your F-body will look much better with the ugly sound absorbing mat removed.

Set aside the mat anchors and the mat itself. You may want to keep the mat, or you may want to throw it away, the call is yours right now. I threw my mat away but kept the anchors (never know when you might need them) because my mat had been pretty much chewed up, so it wasn't worth keeping anyway. The car sounds much more authoritative with the mat removed, idling, driving, or running hard. Don't know what kind of weight savings this was, since a good breeze came up and sent the mat flying across the garage. Not much, maybe two pounds. Don't think you are going to get major weight savings here!

Now, take either a small ratchet, open ended wrench, or adjustable wrench, and remove the four bolt screws holding the blocking plate at the opening to the scoop. You need to remove these from under the hood, doesn't matter in what order, just make sure you don't drop the screws or the plate. That thing is sharp on the edges, and could fall where you don't want it (like tip first into a relay or a wire!). Keep the screws handy, maybe in the ashtray of your interior or that small pocket in the right hip of your jeans. You will need them again! Soon! You might want to keep your metal plate. You won't need it anymore though, so set it aside with the plastic mat anchors.

Now, with the metal plate removed, you should see daylight from the underside of the hood, looking out through the scoop. You can even reach your hand in / out of the hood. This next part requires some coordination, so you might want to get a friend handy. The scoop itself only requires one bolt to hold it on at the front, but two bolts to hold it on to the opening of the power bulge. So, you should at this time have your scoop unit, the drip rail that came with it, and the hex cut mesh guard for the opening of the scoop.

The mesh guard goes on first, replacing the blocking off plate. Then the rain guard goes on (attaches to the left and right most bolt in the mesh guard), and then the scoop goes on (attaches to the left and right most bolt in the mesh guard). Now, I was missing a bolt in this setup and didn't have one that would fit in my spares jar. So, I had to rob Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes. I took one of the unneeded bolts from the grille (leaving it supported by one rather than two bolts, still plenty) and used the cannibalized bolt to mount the scoop. To make things a little easier, you can go ahead and mount the grille, if you just attach it at the two center points. That will keep the grille up in the power bulge opening and you only need to leave the furthermost left and right bolt holes open to finish the installation. This is where the scoop will attach to the mesh and fit into the power bulge of the hood.

Now, with a friend's help (this takes three hands, most of the time), place the drip rail/scoop assembly into the power bulge, and work it gently back until it mates up nicely with the opening in the power bulge hood and the mesh grille, where the blocking plate used to be. This would be easy if your hood were removed and laying upside down on the ground, but it isn't, so you're going to need three hands, one to hold the scoop, and two hands to hold the bolts in place and to secure them. Now, the scoop has a little 'leg' on it, which fits under the support beams for the underhood area. You are going to have to maneuver this around until it fits correctly. You'll see the bolt hole to line this 'leg' up on. Put the left most and right most bolt into the scoop now, and tighten them down. Once the scoop is installed this way, it's cake to put the 'leg' bolt in. You hood should already be pre-drilled from the factory for the installation of this bolt (and the entire system!). Mine was. Once the scoop itself is installed, step back, admire your now functional (if not hooked up and ducted) power bulge hood.

Once the K&N filter is installed, and the sublid is in place, it is time to put your cowl induction lid on. This is the lid with the round hole in top, and the rubber gasket that seals the cowl induction air cleaner lid to the hood mounted cowl induction scoop. You simply drop this lid onto the other lid, and you align the intake feed hole and gasket with the snorkel of the air cleaner. There are two alignment arrows stamped into the lid near the opening, and the letters S N K L, which stands for "Snorkel". Pretty self explanatory. Try your wingnut now.

Still won't fit, will it?

That's because the TBI system uses a retarded wing nut threaded retainer, some curved looking piece and even with the larger air cleaner assembly, the wingnut still won't secure the cowl induction lid setup down well enough to use properly.

What do you do now? Well, before you started this project, you did get everything above that I mentioned, didn't you? Good. Use that 3/8" brass nut that I told you about above. It is a 3/8" nut that simply slides down the threaded retaining bar, and when you put your wingnut on, the wingnut and the brass nut keep the air cleaner secure. About $0.35 at the most. Paint it black when you get the chance. That was easy.

Let's keep things simple.

Take the amber illuminated rocker switch above and set it inside your car. Now, clip off the factory end of the hot wire and strip off some sheathing from the #10 gauge wire. Connect these two by twisting the wires together, solder here, then wrap in black electrical tape. You have your first lead. Now, run the #10 wire down from the scoop, by the hood hinge support, along the fender to the windshield area, and then down along the side of the instrument panel. Go near the hood release lever, use a wire tie here to secure it to the side of the panel (you figure it out). Trim off the excess. Then, carefully, drop the front of the under dash cover (pops down), and run the wire along this, behind the three 'teeth' that stick up. Now, feed the wire up along the side of the center console panel, where your right knee would be most of the time, you'll see it. We are going to place the switch to activate the scoop manually in the same part of the dash as the remote rear hatch release switch is located.

Get out your ratchet, get a extension, and remove the two screws retaining the center console remote hatch release dash panel. Carefully remove this, there are a lot of wires behind it. First, gently apply pressure and twist the little amber light that illuminates your stereo / climate control systems at night. It has four little prongs to hold it in place and these snap off if you get hamfisted with them (or you sneeze! I broke one off and swore like a sailor!) Now that the light is out, use your pocket knife or a small screwdriver to unclip the remote hatch release plug from the rocker switch. Be gentle and patient, you may have to get some slack from the wires in the dash and rotate the panel upside down to see how it comes out. Once the panel is free, you need to take your drill and make a hole in the dash panel, to the left of the factory rocker switch. Make this hole just large enough to slide the rocker switch into. It's threaded, and comes with a screw on tightener. Once the hole is complete, slide the rocker switch into it for a test fit, you want it as tight as possible.

Look at the rocker switch. Notice which contacts are ground, power, and lead, write this down on a scrap sheet of paper nearby. You might need it again. OK. Now take the lead from the hood scoop, and cut it with about 2 inches of slack left in it. Strip the sheathing from the end of the #10 gauge wire and put on a electrical connection (female) blade style connector. I like to insert the wire into the neck of the connector, bend it back over the neck of the connector, crimp it, and then solder all of that, letting the solder sink down into the wire, etc. After you solder the connection on, wrap it in black electrical tape, and then connect this to the lead prong. You might need to bend the prongs back some to keep them from touching (not smurfy if they do). I did this just out of habit. Now, screw on the retainer ring to the rocker switch, getting it as tight as possible so the switch does not just rotate in the assembly.

Take your #10 wire again, spool out some slack, strip off the end, and attach another female blade connector. Bend the wire back, crimp it, solder it, tape it, and attach it to the power connection of your rocker switch. The power that operates your scoop will also supply the power required to illuminate your rocker switch. Strip off the end of this power lead about four inches out from the female blade connector. Now, attach the in-line fuse to this, twist the wire, crimp it, solder and tape it. String out some more #10 gauge wire, strip off the end, and twist, crimp, solder, and tape this end to the other end of the in-line fuse, completing the fuse bridge. This in-line fuse will protect your setup, and will fit nicely into the dash panel, behind the dash, out of the way.

Now, spool out the wire some more and run enough wire to reach from the rocker switch to your fuse box under your left foot under the dash. Run this wire back along the way of the first wire, and you'll see where to drop it down to the fuse box. Leave this one alone after you run it, we'll get back to it. NEVER hook up power before you have all of your grounds properly attached!

Be sure to leave enough wire to let you reach any part of your fuse box with about 2 inches to spare. We'll tuck the extra up under the dash if we don't need it. Better to have some slack than none at all.

Now, cut the wire right there. Go back to the rocker switch, strip off the end of the #10 gauge wire, attach another female blade connector, bend, crimp, solder and tape this connection, slide it onto the GROUND of the rocker switch, and run the wire back along the other two wires, and follow it out of the interior along the first line, back into the engine compartment. I ran this ground to another bolt near the first ground (easy to spot). I left enough slack to handle any movement of the hood but not enough to get in the way. I stripped the end of the wire, put a ground connector (the end with the round hole in it, like it's going to slide over a screw), and then bent, crimped, soldered and taped the connection. I found a bolt near the first ground, and chose this as well. I used a ratchet to undo the nut, slid the nut off, slid the ground wire on, put the nut back on, and tightened it down well.

It kept the installation looking neat. Almost there! Going back to the two new black wires in my engine compartment, I took my side loading electrical ribbed conduit, and worked the wires into it, making the whole thing look factory. I extended the conduit up into the hood bracing, and then all the way to the edge of the fender/windshield crack. There is a small trough that you can push the conduit down into that holds it nicely. Looking very nice!

Now, back to the fuse box. Here, we take the wire that we left previously hanging near the brake and accelerator pedals, we strip the end, and put a male blade end on it, bend, crimp, solder and tape it. Turn your soldering iron off now, you won't need it anymore. Now, if you have a Formula, the best place to hook your hot lead up to is the part of the fuse box labeled "FOG LMP". This is the fuse for the IROC-Z and T/A (and aero package Firebird) with the front spoiler mounted fog lamps. Since this is a Formula, and doesn't have the fog lamp option (never did), well, there's the scoop hookup location for the hot power wire. If you own a F-body with fog lamps, search around, there's a fuse block there that you can use.

Now, reattach the little amber illumination light to the center dash panel, reconnect the rear hatch release, and carefully rearrange all wires as you place the dash panel back into place. You may want to use some electrical tape to secure the in-line fuse into the back of the dash panel. I did. Reattach the dash panel with the two screws that you removed. Looks smurfy, doesn't it? Take a deep breath, a sigh of relief. You deserve it.

Now for the moment of truth. Reach out with your finger, try the rocker switch.

Flick the switch, it should illuminate, and if you've done everything correctly, you'll hear a 'kathump' as the scoop snaps open. Turn it off, and you should hear the scoop close. At speed (or with the AC on, radio, etc.), you won't hear it. But you will notice a difference, and you will notice that your carb / TBI fed car will sound much more authoritative!

Congratulations!

Take a little time to go back over your installation. Tuck and tie up any lose wires (dangling wires look amateur), make sure that all connections are secure and not in danger of being yanked out / cut accidentally. Tape all wires along the door frame securely to keep them from moving into the way of a closing door and getting severed. Don't leave it looking like an amateur, clean up after yourself! That's the mark of a good hot rodder.

Not bad for about two hours of work.

And it really looks smurfy when you pop the hood! That cowl induction system. That air cleaner assembly. All factory, and now your non-functional power bulge hood is functional, working to bring your carb or TBI unit dense, cold air for improved performance, all at the flick of a switch! The hex mesh grille is ten times better looking than the regular block off plate. You may want to paint the hex grille a different color, like gray, but I think the flat black is nice enough.

Even if you run a TPI car, I would suggest you lose the block off plate in order to free up underhood air pressure (hood lift at speed) and to reduce underhood temperature (thermal air purge). Just a little trick there. You will probably notice a small difference, but every bit counts.

I don't know the operating life of the solenoid, so I'm only going to flip my scoop open when I need it. I don't know if the solenoid can overheat and fail, since from the factory it was originally designed to be open only when the accelerator was all the way to the floor (which wasn't for extended periods of time). So, I can't tell you if you run your scoop constantly for a month, keeping it open 'electrically' every time you drive, that the solenoid won't overheat and burn up. I have no information. Sorry. So I'm playing it safe and warning you before hand.

Also, when you go to the track, I would simply tie the scoop open with a twist tie (the lever that controls the scoop is obvious and can be tied 'open' easily), not having to worry about the scoop switch. During this time, I would also unhook the plastic ribbed air intake hose, cap off the snorkel to the air cleaner, and simply let the engine breathe through the scoop, which is much larger and a much colder source of air than the little scoop on the radiator support! In fact, if you want to get hard-core, you could disconnect the plastic hose, remove the air scoop, and weld shut the snorkel entirely, letting the engine breathe through the open scoop all the time! Chevy did this with the '67 302 Z-28s. Look at that setup to get ideas on how this setup might be modified for even more hi-perf use.

The K&N X-Treme lid. Now the great thing about the two piece air cleaner lid is that K&N makes a new product called the X-Treme lid. This looks just like your regular AC lid, but instead of being solid stamped metal, it is composed of a dome shaped air filter made of the same great K&N material. This X-Treme unit allows air to flow in all through the top of the lid assembly as well as from the sides. This item basically turns your perimeter breathing filter into an open element filter, up to 1000cfm more, able to breathe from the side and top, using much, much more surface area to draw intake charge air in.