One of the characteristics of project cars is......they are never finished. That is certainly the case with STALKERV6 #29, and many of the changes have been documented on this site.

Very early in the build of #29 I considered alternatives to the standard fiberglass hood scoop. The fiberglass provided in the kit is very high quality and the scoop barely provides clearance for a small aftermarket air filter for the Holley carb. Since the scoop was a separate piece from the hood, I entertained thoughts of having something stick up out of the hood, like maybe a large round air filter or some sort of carb scoop. The throaty Chevy V6 gives the Stalker a very American hot-rod persona, much more so that the other sevenesque cars that are powered with whiney little four cylinder engines.

But the original scoop fits the car very nicely, looks finished, and does an admirable job of covering the carb. It was only after a discussion of various air filters arose on the private Stalker email list that I revisited the carb scoop ideas. There is no doubt the recommended filter that is squeezed under the standard Stalker hood is marginal in size, and after driving the car for three years it was time to shake things up a little.

Maybe it was memories of Ed Roth's Rat Fink deposited deep with the recesses of my brain reaching back to childhood in the sixties. Or maybe I was ready to raise the Stalker's street presence a notch or two. Anyway, when I spied the Hilborn styled carb scoop in the Summit Racing catalog, the mental gears began to grind. What is more audacious than a rowdy, four-barreled V6 stuffed into a little go-kart of a car? Why not have a big ol' shiny scoop bursting out the hood of the tiny little car as it enhaled cold air into the ravenous 3.4L V6? Ok, maybe we are getting a little hyper, but the more I thought about the scoop sticking out of the Stalker hood, the more the idea seemed plausible.

What caught my attention was Summit catalog #SUM-G3020, Hilborn-style scoop for single four-barrel carburetor. The scoop comes with a paper air filter with twice the surface area of the filter I had been using on #29, and also a metal screen for the front of the scoop. The entire rig easily attaches to the carb via the standard filter stud and can be left in its delivered polished condition or painted if desired.

Actually, this was a very simple mod and the hood can be easily reverted back to the original form. I didn't want to make any permanent mods to the Stalker hood in case the whole exercise turned out to be a bust, either from an aesthetic or performance standpoint.

The hood already had a hole in it to allow the Holley to protrude into the standard scoop. I hadn't been particularly careful to make the hole pretty since it was hidden by the fiberglass scoop. After some measuring and a mockup cut from poster board, I determined that a mask could be fabricated to cover the original hole in the hood, and with careful placement would allow the hood to open without having to remove the mask. Plus, the mask could be attached to the hood using some of the original scoop mounting holes.

Some scrap acrylic found in the shop was appropriated for Project Scoop, cut into shape per the poster board pattern and sprayed with aerosol black paint. So far this mod had cost me.......nothing, and the car was now ready for the new Summit scoop.

I was unprepared for the impact the scoop had on the car's street presence. The  rubber-necking quotient increased a couple of orders of magnitude, and it is hard to look at the audacious scoop sticking out of the little car without smiling. I also hadn't thought much about the impact this mod would have on the overall appearance of the car. By looking at the photo at the top of this article you can see how the low windshield and elimination of the fiberglass hood scoop has changed the entire perception of the car. It is now lower and appears more slender than the original configuration. Aesthetics are a highly subjective area, but I like the change and think it enhances the Stalker.

Does the scoop increase performance? I'm not sure since seat-of-the-pants impressions can be unreliable and I haven't conducted any timed testing. The engine does seem to breath easier at higher rpm, but I don't know if this is due to ram effect or the larger filter element.

But the car sure looks faster, and somewhere ol' Rat Fink is itching to jump into the STALKERV6 and scorch off into the sunset!

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