Hoodscoop Your ’99-2000

The hood pad will have to be removed. The factory 35th Anniversary cars have holes in the pad for the studs. The nonscoop hood pad does not have the holes, nor do we recommend you putting them in.

The pad should be removed from the hood.

Allen Shepley uses these neat pliers to remove the plugs. It’s also a good idea to hit the Ford dealership for some new plugs. Sometimes removal will strip the teeth off of the plug.

Shepley places the hoodscoop on the hood for position. This process would be easier had we ordered the scoop kit from Kar Kraft Engineering. Kar Kraft’s scoop, available in factory blems for roughly $129 or as a “matte black, open Anniversary Scoop” for $199 comes with a pattern. When you buy the scoop from Ford, you get just that—the scoop.

Since our scoop was a Ford part, we had to measure the entire setup. Shepley is seen here measuring from the front locator stud to the rear locator stud.

Next, Shepley measures across and down the hood from where his original “eyeball” marks were. Once he’s satisfied that the scoop is in the right location, he’ll mark the spots for the drill.

The marks are made with a China Marker. Before the holes are drilled, these are double-checked again. Remember, it’s better to mark and measure twice and cut once.

Now the drilling begins. The folks at Kar Kraft Engineering told us that the 35th Anniversary scoop is KISS principle, compared to the ’01 scoop. From what they told us, the new car scoop requires 11 holes to be drilled, while the Anniversary scoop has only two.

After we drilled the holes, all the debris from the hood was cleaned off and the scoop’s fit was checked. Satisfied, Shepley moved on to the next step—the hood stripe.

A precleaner was used to degrease the hood. This will promote good adhesion.

Just as in our story on the Mach 1 stripes in the June ’01 issue (“How To Stripe Your Steed,” page 72), Shepley lays down an ample coat of soapy water to aid in the stripe positioning.

This is where it becomes a two-man job. Kevin Coleman just happened to be around to help Shepley pull apart the decal. Be careful that the decal does not stick to itself—a real danger on one this size.

We won’t lie to you: this stripe can be a real bear to apply, because it’s big and bulky. We recommend that you wet an area larger than the stripe just in case you lay it “out of bounds.”

The only indication we saw where the front locator hole goes is here. Though, to be honest, it does seem to be a bit ambiguous. Other than that, the stripes are pretty self-explanatory.

Out comes the squeegee. We spent quite awhile removing all the bubbles from the stripe. This can be time-consuming, but patience will be rewarded. Work from the center of the stripe out to the edges. Any bubbles you find can be removed by pricking them with an X-Acto No. 11 blade.

In this early photo, the scoop is held in place by this sticky tape. The two studs should have self-taping nuts, which come with the Kar Kraft kit but not the Ford factory scoop.

The scoop is settled down into position. Now our ’99 has gone from a belly button GT to a cool-looking GT with some extra muscle on the hood.

When the 35th Anniversary Mustang came out, we went stupid. Several folks in our office desperately tried to find ways, short of living in the car or a cardboard box, to get their hands on one of the cars. The GT sporting the scoops—side and hood—as well as the cool honeycomb rear appliqué and other custom appointments were all the rage. Tech Editor Houlahan even went so far as to make the Silver press photo car the background on his work PC. I personally sat in the office and looked longingly at the brochure for several days.

In fact, it got so bad, much time was spent by yours truly and spouse at the Ford dealership seeing what could be done to make one at home in our garage. After she let me down gently by informing me that our next new ride would be a four-door (shudder), I sighed and realized that we would miss a neat piece of Ford marketing and Mustang history.

The nice thing is that you don’t have to. Just about everything is out there to make an Anniversary Mustang—not that we are recommending that. But we will say that some of those parts sure look cool on a ’98-’01. So, with that in mind, we decided to visit Mustang Central and watch as Allen Shepley dressed out a ’99 GT with a hot scoop.