Smooth engine bay panels?

[dave73]

Does anyone have any pictures of mopars with a smooth engine bay? Saw a car at a local show that looked amazing, was aluminum bead roll and wow. Did a quick google search and didn't see any cudas, challengers, Chargers etc with this done. Looks something like this:

[Cuda Cody]

Smooth engine bay inner fenders and firewalls do look very nice and custom.  It's a lot of work to go that route and really shows a lot of craftsmanship and thinking ahead.  I really do like the stock look of a mopar engine bay, but can appreciate the time and effort it takes to customize an engine bay.  I don't have any photos of smooth Mopar engine bays, but know I've seen some.

[cuda hunter]

Kind of....

[GoodysGotaCuda]

I can appreciate it, but I preferred to leave many of the factory contours. I think it helps balance some of the "restomod" in my car.

[Brads70]

Those panels are structural especially on a unibody car. It's the shape that gives it its strength, if it was smooth it wouldn't be nearly as strong. So if you wanted to do that you would need to add  tubing to maintain the structural integrity.

[72bluNblu]

While I can appreciate the craftsmanship and skill needed to fabricate those panels, it's strictly a show car trick. No matter how well you plan it, you end up making basic maintenance tasks unnecessarily time consuming and difficult. Good luck if you need to track down a short in your wire harness, or even just add some brake fluid on one of those cars. It's for cars that spend more time on the grass than on the road.

And Brad brings up a good point. Depending how those panels are installed the structural integrity of the car may have to be considered. I know on some of those cars the panels are installed like covers over the original panels, hiding all the wiring and components in between. But if they're used to replace the stock panels you'd have to be careful to maintain the structural integrity of the car in the case of the unibody cars.

[dave73]

You all bring up a lot of good points. The car I saw had covers that went over the existing structure. They bolted to the fender mounting locations and looked like they may be able to come off rather easily. Didn't get a good look at how they were bolted down low though.

[HP2]

One thing that almost always gets me when someone tries to clean up a mopar engine bay, is the wiper motor.  It takes a bit of work to relocated and hide wiring. But to actually remove and remount the wiper motor is a major effort that only rarely ever is done.

Inner fenders could easily have a sheet cut, bent, and screwed in place to smooth them out. Firewall is a whole 'nuther deal.

[GoodysGotaCuda]

One thing that almost always gets me when someone tries to clean up a mopar engine bay, is the wiper motor.  It takes a bit of work to relocated and hide wiring. But to actually remove and remount the wiper motor is a major effort that only rarely ever is done.

Inner fenders could easily have a sheet cut, bent, and screwed in place to smooth them out. Firewall is a whole 'nuther deal.

The wiper motor is indeed not very fun. I ended up putting matching bolts [not studs] and hid the wiring the best I could.